Chairman's Blog
Can good Catholics criticise the Pope?
I'm reposting this from March 2014, inspired by seeing one of the arguments I address below used on social media somewhere. (By someone who apparently hadn't heard of Savoranola, Dante, or Robert Grosseteste.) 2014 seems like a lifetime ago, but although I have criticised Pope Francis since then I stand by the principles I set out back then, which explain the on-going policy of this blog about how to handle difficult issues surrounding Pope Francis.
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Michael Voris thinks not. His arguments are interesting but don't work.
First, he says that to criticise the Pope causes scandal, sharply contrasting this with criticism of bishops and Cardinals. (First silly point: there is no sharp contrast. What is true of one is to a large extent true of the other.) That there is a danger of causing scandal is true, but it is also true that, in certain circumstances, not criticising the Pope causes scandal. It is lucky for us today that St Catherine of Siena and Savoranola and Dante and Robert Grossteste criticised the popes of their day, because they prove that not all Catholics are guilty of Papolatry: that it is not necessary to have your conscience surgically removed to become a member of the Mystical Body. They are our defence against some of the most insistent and damaging polemics, developed by Protestants and re-used by Secularists, against the Church. To use a phrase of Pope Francis, when I encounter a clericalist, it makes me feel anti-clerical.
Voris then turns to the counter-argument that saints have criticised Popes. In an astonishing inversion of logic, he says that they could legitimately criticise Popes because they were saints.
First, this misses the point, which was not that only saints are widely regarded as being justified in their criticisms of Popes (see my short list above: plenty of others have been too), but that this widespread judgement can't be too off the mark because even saints criticised popes.
Secondly, it would be strange to suggest that St Catherine and St Paul and the other saints had to ask themselves if they were holy enough to carry out their obligations. That way only egomaniacs will criticise the Pope, and that won't be progress.
The wider point is well made by no less that the Supreme Legislator himself, in Canon Law: even the laity can have the right and indeed the duty to voice their concerns about their pastors. The Pope is not excepted.
Canon 212 sec. 3, the laity has "the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons."
I don't say this because I am about to embark on a lot of blogging criticising the Holy Father. I just think it is important to oppose grossly distorted understandings of Catholic teaching wherever I see them, to the best of my ability, because, to coin a phrase, they cause scandal.
As far as criticising Popes is concerned, I would in practice urge great caution.
First, any criticism which comes across as personal, or as mocking or insulting, is inappropriate to a person holding his high office. That is because the office is holy, even if not all holders of the office are holy. The office is august, it commands our respect. The holder does not become impeccable - incapable of sin - but it does mean that any criticism is a serious matter, and should be undertaken, if at all, in a serious way. This of course is part of what the canon says.
I do, incidentally, think that mockery, ridicule and even invective can sometimes be appropriate: I'd be in trouble if I didn't, since Our Lord used them, and so did many prophets, Fathers of the Church, saints, and apologists down the ages. They are useful to take people worthy of ridicule down a peg or two. The Pope, however, is never ridiculous. When he is wrong, things are too serious for that.
Secondly, as with others in very exalted offices, but very much more so, it is difficult to separate what is personal to the Pope from what is the initiative of advisors and office-holders. He does have the fearful ultimate responsibility - true - but as initiatives and policies develop from day to day it is impossible, at least for those of us without inside information, to know what is the Pope's idea, what is his speechwriter, what comes from (good, bad, or indifferent) briefings given to the Pope, and what are the actions of his Cardinals and other ministers.
For example, I was astonished to read that Pope Paul VI approved the new Lectionary without giving it prolonged attention, and actually said so. He trusted his advisers. If this was an error, it was not the same error as the error (say) of deliberately excluding 1 Corinthians 11:29 (about the sin of receiving Communion unworthily) from the Lectionary, when it had previously been read on Maundy Thursday and Corpus Christi. Being too trusting is not the same fault as not taking seriously the importance of being well prepared for Holy Communion. If people had laid into Pope Paul for the second thing in 1970, they would have been barking up the wrong tree.
Far better, therefore, to voice concerns, if there are legitimate concerns, about policies, about new regulations or liturgical texts or other documents, but without turning it into a personal attack on the Holy Father.
We are sometimes told that being 'over critical' of the Pope or bishops is the besetting sin of traditionalists. As a matter of fact, this is not true. Not only do liberal Catholic publications like The Tablet attack the pope all the time (yes, including Pope Francis), but many Catholic organisations down the years who had no particular connection with the Traditional Mass have, for one reason or another, ended up associated with criticisms of the hierarchy.
The classic example is Aid to the Church in Need, which used to criticise the appeasement of Communism which was the official Vatican policy under Pope Paul VI. More recently, the headline cases have been Pro Ecclesia and SPUC. Now we have Deacon Nick Donnelly being hauled over the coals, for what we can assume is the same thing. I don't say these criticisms were not justified, or that they were not expressed in the best ways: that would be a long discussion. I've just said that criticism isn't ruled out in principle, so the matter is an open one. My point is simply that the Traditional Mass was nothing to do with it.
Critics of traditionalists have become confused by the fact that until Summorum Pontifcum it was such open season on trads and any old stick was good enough to beat them. But once you take away the assumption that support for the Traditional Mass is itself an act of personal disloyalty to the Pope, then you can allow yourself to notice that established traditionalist organisations like the Latin Mass Society and the Una Voce Federation are, and always have been, models of diplomacy and restraint.
They combine this respect for the hierarchy with a complete adherence to the unchanging teaching of the Church, not out of any superficial ultramontanism (whatever the Pope said about his breakfast is the latest infallible doctrine), but because of their attachment to Tradition. This is something I want to develop in future posts.
Happy Christmas to all my readers!
And a reminder that the Christmas season goes on till... 2nd February, the feast of the Purification of Our Lady (Candlemas). If you follow the Traditional calendar.
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Islam and the Extraordinary Form
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| A glimpse of a transcendant mystery. |
Today I am publishing a new Position Paper from FIUV, on the subject of Islam, on Rorate Caeli. Go over there to read it in full.
It sets out a very simple argument which seems difficult to deny. It goes like this.
1. Engagement with Islam (whether with a view to mutual understanding or evangelisation) is facilitated by common ground with Islam. The more common ground one has, whether cultural or theological, the better one can talk productively with people of other religions.
2. There is a great deal more common ground between Islam and that aspect of Catholicism exemplified by the Traditional liturgy, than there is between Islam and what is manifested by the reformed liturgy. In this, the Traditional Catholics are close to the situation of the ancient Christian churches in majority-Muslim countries.
What do I have in mind? Well, the ancient liturgy, and to a large extent the people who attend it, like the ancient churches of the Middle East, take (more) seriously the differences between the sexes; they use a sacred language, chant, and ritual; and they have more to say about fasting. The Novus Ordo has, from a strictly liturgical and also from a cultural standpoint, systematically eroded this common ground with Islam, just as it has eroded the common ground with the Oriental Churches.
Another point the paper makes is that Evangelical Christianity has its own approach to engaging with Islam which takes the opposite tack. They have common ground with Islam in placing great emphasis on a holy book, and in downplaying sacramental and incarnational theology and practice. They have an interesting, if adversarial, dialogue with Muslim apologists, in which the Muslims criticise Evangelical Christianity for giving God a super-human 'partner' and mediator, Jesus Christ, and the Evangelicals criticise Islam for giving a role in religious practice to a holy place (Mecca), and for an attitude to the Qu'ran which places its sacredness as a text (for example, in ritual proclamation) above its comprehension.
This approach is obviously not available to Catholics, and it is apparant that the general atmosphere and attitude to be found in the Church today falls between the two stools. It neither engages effectively with the ritual, aesetic, and 'family values' side of Islam, nor with what we might call the 'Low Church' side of Islam. Even the common ground the Holy See finds with Muslim countries in debates in the United Nations, notably about 'reproductive rights', is undermined by liberal Catholic attitudes to moral questions.
Since Islam is clearly going to be of major importance in the West as well as in traditionally-Muslim countries for the forseeable future, this is of no small importance.
A historical issue which is worth noting along the way is the retreat of Sufism and the advance of Salafism and Wahhabism in Sunni Islam in the 20th century. Until the early 20th century Sufism was a major and normal part of Muslim life in the Sunni world. Like Shia Islam, Sufism acknowledges 'saints' and encourages pilgrimages to their shrines. It elaborates Muslim ritual, most famously with the 'whirling' dances of the Dervishes. And its mystical theology emphasises a disinterested love of God, and the possibility of union with God, which contrasts with a literal-minded reading of the paradise offered to good Muslims in the Qu'ran. Like syncretistic 'folk' Islam in Africa and Asia, this is opposed by, and to an extent, has been successfully cleared away by, the purifying, reformist project represented by Salafism and Wahhabism.
It would be simplistic to look at this through the lens of Catholic and Protestant conflict within Christianity, but the net result is a form of Islam where the common ground with Evangelical Protestantism has been somewhat expanded, and the common ground with Catholicism somewhat contracted. In engaging with Islam, it is worth bearing in mind that some of the things Muslim apologists criticise in Christianity, and particularly in Catholicism, can be found in widespread Muslim practice of the recent past.
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Shakespeare on the Traditional Mass
The idea that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic, and put coded messages into his plays about the Faith, is so attractive to me as a Catholic and a lover of Shakespeare that I have to be careful about confirmation bias. However, as I've noted before on this blog, Clare Asquith (in Shadowplay) and others have made a very serious historical case for it. Once you see it, you can't look at the plays in quite the same way again.
Shakespeare was writing at a time when pomp and ceremony in the liturgy were under intense attack. It had been stripped down to the bare minimum in the Anglican liturgy, and even that was too much for the Puritans. Yet this is what he wrote about a fantasy, ideal liturgy, in Ancient Delphi. The ambassador Dion speaks, in A Winter's Tale.
I shall report,
For most it caught me, the celestial habits,
Methinks I so should term them, and the reverence
Of the grave wearers. O, the sacrifice!
How ceremonious, solemn and unearthly
It was i' the offering!
A common theme in the plays is the murder near or before the beginning of an old king, in the course of some kind of revolution. What kind of revolution had turned Shakespeare's world upside down within living memory? Well, what sort of king was it? What attitude does the ghost of 'Old Hamlet' evoke in his viewers?
We do it wrong, being so majestical, to offer it the show of violence.
The doomed King Duncan in Macbeth combines humility with angelic power:
Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
What has been kept safe in a private chapel for twenty years, in A Winter's Tale? Something to look at: a holy statue, which comes to life.
Let no man mock me,
For I will kiss her.
PAULINA
... Shall I draw the curtain?
LEONTES
No, not these twenty years.
PERDITA
So long could I
Stand by, a looker on.
Again: 'It is required
You do awake your faith'
Shakespeare, like all of his contemporaries, lived surrounded by the imposing ruins of Catholic religious houses. He did not view them with triumph or contempt. They suggested to him, rather, what would once have taken place within them. (Sonnet 73):
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
What we have in the Traditional liturgy of the Church is something we can see and, particularly when sung, hear. It is above all majestic, it fills us with awe, but it is something also gentle, comforting, and sustaining. It compels us to look within ourselves and repent of our sins, with a combination of fearfulness, piteousness, and confidence in God's mercy, which can more easily be experienced than described: though Shakespeare does a pretty good job.
And we have that liturgy still, in spite of all revolutions: still largely hidden, but there for those who seek it out.
(Photos: High Mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception, SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford.)
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Pierantoni answers Buttiglione
This article by Prof Claudio Pierantoni, one of the signatories of the Filial Correction, is very helpful, certainly to me, not least because Pierantoni expresses the problem in a way slightly differently from the way I have been doing. Pierantoni is a long-term acquaintance of Rocco Buttiglione, and not only knows his thinking well and sympathetically, but has corresponded with him on these precise issues.
Here is a key passage; do go over to LifeSite to see the whole thing.
There are therefore some cases in which remarried divorcees can (through their confessor and after suitable spiritual discernment) be considered to be in God’s grace and therefore deserving of receiving the sacraments. It seems a shocking novelty, but it is a doctrine that is entirely, and I dare say rock-solidly, traditional.
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More thoughts about the Buenos Aires letter: on ecclesial politics
With apologies to my readers, my thoughts have been particularly slow in forming on this blog in recent days. Still, further to my last post, here's a couple more: about the impact of this move on ecclesial politics.
A while ago I was asked by a journalist to comment on an article in L'Ossovertore Romano by Cardinal Ouellet, so I looked at this in some detail. Ouellet, like Cardinal Mueller, has been consistently putting out a very careful 'conservative' interpretation of Amoris laetitia. It is not so very different from the interpretation I gave on this blog when Amoris first came out.
His strategy has four parts.
1. He criticises conservatives worried about AL as misinterpreting it.
2. He also rejects those interpretations of AL which allow reception of Holy Communion, in circumstances condemned by the previous discipline, as misinterpretations ‘equally… (if not more so)’.
3. He stresses that what is really important in ‘pastoral accompaniment’ is listening and counselling, not access to the sacraments.
4. When he does turn to cases of access to the sacraments, his description of legitimate cases is such that they could be allowed under Pope St John Paul II’s Familiaris consortio.
What, then, can we take from AL, according to Cardinal Ouellet?
What is new, as I have noted, is the broadening of cases that are exceptional by virtue of the degree of subjective imputability of an objective fault, a degree influenced by the reasons noted above, especially unawareness of sin, and the weight of extenuating circumstances.
This could mean, for example, that just as Familiaris consortio envisaged the reception of Communion by couples living in an illicit second union if they had undertaken to live ‘as brother and sister’, so a determination by pastors that a couple were not in a state of mortal sin, for example for psychological reasons (lack of awareness of the gravity of the act, lack of consent), could lead to their reception of Communion, perhaps in private to avoid scandal.
However, when it comes to applying this conception of exceptional cases, Cardinal Ouellet becomes ‘hesitant’:
Some do exactly that, holding that a sincere intention of changing, even if it is not yet carried out because of limits in a person’s capacity for decisions, is enough to allow them to be admitted to the sacraments of Penance and Eucharist, on condition however of avoiding scandal. Such openness may be discerned in certain cases in the internal forum but must not be elevated to a general rule. I am personally hesitant about this approach because I am sensitive to the sacramental logic which demands sacramental coherence of persons who are communing with the faithfulness of Christ the Bridegroom giving Himself to His Bride the Church.
Certain immediate statements, even those of bishops’ assemblies, either opening the door broadly to communion or opposing the direction taken by the Pontiff, must be recalibrated on the basis of the Holy Father’s own text which seeks a genuine formation in the truth of the Gospel, one which certainly gives greater importance to individual conscience (AL 303), but not for all that encouraging the risk that “the exception might become the rule”
Again:
A number of people immediately worried - not without some reason, given already existing practices - that this would result in a general provision and a trivialization of Communion in many cases. Certain hasty statements by bishops may have given such an impression. This is neither the spirit nor the letter of the text.
The website of the Vatican has some weight, but it’s not a magisterial authority, and if you look at what the Argentine bishops wrote in their directive, you can interpret this in an orthodox way.
Some thoughts about the Buenos Aires letter
So, on the first question. The Pope can speak as Pope and as a private person. In the latter capacity what he says may be of interest as an indication of his thinking, but it wouldn’t bind the faithful to believe anything. Normally private letters wouldn’t be considered part of the magisterium. Putting something in the AAS is a way of making it part of the magisterium. It is a bit surprising to do this with a private letter but I think there are precedents. Certainly many things are in the AAS which were addressed in the first place to particular groups, such as Pius XII’s famous talk to midwives authorising NFP. Putting such things in the AAS is a way of directing them to the whole Faithful.
On the second question: There is, however, more to making something part of the magisterium, and therefore binding on the consciences of Catholics, than simply asserting that it is magisterial. The content of the document is also relevant. ‘Legal positivists’ claim that laws are valid just by virtue of a valid procedure approving them, but this is false and has never been accepted by the Church. Even in the case of human laws, a law will fail to bind in conscience if it is impossible to follow, for example if it is incomprehensible, retroactive, or totally unreasonable. In those cases it fails to be a binding law, or, really, a law at all. Law is by definition something which guides action, and such putative laws are incapable of doing that.
In a similar way, if we are to talk of a papal magisterial act binding Catholics to believe something, then it must be in accordance with the existing magisterium, and it must be possible to understand what it means. Pope Francis’ letter fails on both counts.
Let's consider the content of the letter in more detail. The letter makes it clear that Pope Francis approves of the guidelines produced by the Bishops of Buenos Aires, but it does not say that these are doctrinally precise and binding on everyone, as opposed to being a reasonable local adaptation of general principles. The attitude of Pope Francis expressed on other occasions, in fact, points more to the latter interpretation. Cf. Amoris laetitia 3:
The guidelines themselves are not entirely clear. They appear to say that a couple living in a state of objective sin may receive Holy Communion without repenting of their sin, since repentence would involve an intention not to return to the sin, and the guidlines' key scenario is one in which the couple have no such intention. The guidlines do not, however, propose the theological presuppositions which would have to be true if this position were to be possible. For example, they do not say that unrepentant mortal sin is not an impediment to the fruitful reception of Holy Communion; nor that Canon 915 (forbidding the giving of Holy Communion to those in objective states of grave sin) is invalid or somehow innaplicable; nor that penitents can be sacramentally absolved of deliberate sins without expressing contrition; nor that the category of mortal sin does not exist; nor that genital sexuality outside marriage is not gravely sinful; nor that a civil union lacking the form necessary for a valid Catholic marriage (let alone: in the absence of the annullment of a previous marriage of one or more of the parties), is a 'marriage' in the sense that sex for the couple is not gravely sinful.
On their most natural interpretation, the guidelines, in short, imply a contradiction with one or more of some very fundamental legal and moral principles, which Catholics are obliged to believe. Pope Francis has never attempted to deny these principles directly; on the contrary, Amoris laetitia implies strongly (in section 3) that it is not concerned with changing the teaching of the Church, and this has often been reiterated by the Pope’s supporters since then. In light of this, giving magisterial authority to this letter of approval of these guidelines seems besides the point.
To summarise, there is no act this or any pope can perform which can free Catholics from the obligation to believe those truths of Faith and Morals which are taught infallibly by the Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium. Among those truths are many which appear to conflict with the Buenos Aires guidelines - though exactly which ones will depend on how those guidelines are defended. (Herein lies the unclarity.) Insofar as the guidlines are incompatible with those principles, including Canon 915, the publication of Pope Francis' letter in the AAS does not make it any more possible for Catholics to accept them as doctrinally sound.
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A reason to be cheerful
Thanks for all the prayers!
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Mgr Loftus: pro-lifers are 'terrorists'
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| Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas |
I've waited to see if there if would be any reaction in the Letters page to Mgr Basil Loftus' latest outrage: an attack on Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, in which he described the Archbishop, and any anyone like him who was actively pro-life, as a terrorist. (Catholic Times, 24th November 2017.)
His column is, as usual, both bizarre and incoherent. Remember, as you read it, that the Catholic Times is sold in the backs of Catholic churches every weekend: this is a newspaper, in other words, with ecclesiastical approval. I transcribe the key section for the record, since the paper has no online presence, even for subscribers.
No-one is more supportive [than Pope Francis] of the rights and paramountcy of all marginalised people, including the unborn - but he is totally opposed to the purportednly pro-life antics of men such as Archbishop Naumann, the recently elected head of the American bishops' 'pro-life committee'.
Where Naumann would erect marquees in papal colours in front of every abortion clinic, and staff them with a 24-hour guard of what Francis calls "prune-faced" people reciting the rosary round the clock, Francis for his part would have smiling and empathetic women there, who khow what it feels like to lose a baby, ready to offer support to the mothers who come out of those clinics, to accompany them in the awful journey of their post-abortion realisation, and to help them to discern what this means. Francis' ideas are clearly articulated by Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago, who recently lost the contest for chairmanship of that episcopal committee. He told his peers, and everyone else, that while strenuously defending the rights of the unborn child: "We should be no less appalled by the indifference towards the thousands of people who die daily for lack of decent medical care; who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighbourhoods; or who are exectuted by the state in the name of justice." The US bishops preferred the argument advanced by Naumann, ...
Single-issue fanatics, whether they are exercised about sex and marriage, about maniples and Communion-on-the-tongue, about celibacy of the clergy, about contraception, or about the right to carry loaded firearms in America while attending Mass, are at heart essentially zealots. Sadly, too, it seems that those who insist on wearing birettas are often selfsame individuals who want to carry Berettas. All these fanatical partisans are by definition biased and prejudiced against any attempt to reason with them in a way that would seek to integrate their sometimes, but not always, rightful concerns within a wider context. Their extremist and sometimes violent propensities make them, in all but name, terrorists.
And sometimes worse. It is said, after all, that one can sometimes reason with a terrorist, but never with a liturgist! The priest who sweeps a child's teddy-bear off the tiny white coffin because it is forbidden by liturgical law, or who excludes females from the role of altar-servers, or refuses to wash their feet on Maundy Thursday, or who turns away from Communion a politician who voted not to criminalise abortion, or a bishop who refuses to back Pope Francis' plea for discernment in the matter of Communion for the divorced and remarried, and for those who live in non-conventional domestic situations, all of them are crypto-terrorists. They are numbered among those whom Paul condemns as ignoring the God's ways of righteousness in favour of their own ill-informed zeal (Romans, 10:3). ...
I hardly think it necessary to point out the contradictions and scandalous assertions in this article. But isn't it funny that he wants to bundle together so many positions he dislikes, in order to discredit them all, and then label people holding them as 'single issue zealots'?
The accusation of terrorism, though not larded with the casual racism which characterised his attack on Cardinal Ranjith ('the Sri Lankan cappa magna fetishist and Tridentine-rite devotee'), and not as theologically fundamental as his denial of the Bodily Resurrection of Our Lord or His Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, is in itself the most serious insult of a named prelate that I have read in his columns, and also perhaps the most insane. It seems Loftus, who was a canon lawyer, has forgotten the right of Archbishops, like lesser folk, to their good name (Canon 220).
I detect in this extract the instinctive anti-abortion sentiments common in Catholic liberals of his generation: the hand-wringing refusal to do anything to oppose what they think of as this dreadful, dreadful thing. It makes his attack on Archbishop Naumann all the more morally troubling.
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The Psychology of Traditionalism
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| Ordinations for the Fraternity of St Peter in Wigratzbad in 2009 |
Before my series of posts about Norman Dixon's Psychology of Military Incompetence, I'd been writing about Mgr Basil Loftus, who exemplifies the attitude that respect for rules indicates a conformist, 'anal', weak-ego individual. This inference enables him, and many others, to conclude that theological and liturgical conservatism and traditionalism manifests a kind of 'rigidity' incompatible with pastoral effectiveness.
I have shown what is wrong with this argument in general terms. It is a truism that people with weak egos and an unhealthy fear of failure will be risk-averse, and will seek the approval of their peers and superiors by conforming. In the post-conciliar situation, however, this approval is not forthcoming to conservatives and traditionalists in mainstream Catholic or non-Catholic institutions: it is, rather, given to those who toe the liberal line. It is rather remarkable that Loftus and his like have not noticed this, but as I have observed that classical presentations of the psychological theory they draw from, including Norman Dixon's, are prone to confuse the risk-taking non-conformism of a person with a strong ego and moral courage, with the liberal violation of traditional norms, and with the norm-violation of the merely self-indulgent.
So to address Loftus' claim, which one also hears from Pope Francis, directly, what sort of people become traditionally-minded priests? It is people of a 'rigid' mentality, seeking safety and predictability in rules and stereotypes? No, it isn't, because conformists want to conform, and you can't conform through a set of views and preferences rejected by almost all your peers and superiors.
That's not to say that traditional Catholics are all perfect and wonderful; they are heir to all the weaknesses of humanity like everyone else. It is just to point out the obvious. It takes moral courage to defend conservative or traditional views in Catholic schools, in Catholic universities or university chaplaincies, and in seminaries. It is sometimes possible to survive by keeping one's head down, but that still requires a high degree of mental toughness, and a willingness to exercise one's own judgement in defiance of the consensus. In a thousand institutions in the West, it is the odd, isolated conservative who acts as the only brake on group-think.
What of conservative or traditional institutions? Surely there one can conform by being conservative or traditional? Yes indeed. But that means that they are no different from any institution with an identifiable character. Conformists will try to conform. It doesn't follow that those in charge of these institutions are seeking to admit or to create conformists. They would be hard put to do it, indeed, because the vast majority of those entering these institutions have spent a lifetime not conforming, up to that point. If they were conformists, they wouldn't be there.
Another factor is the kind of life traditional priests tend to lead: the missionary type. Their distance from headquarters, and immersion in an environment which is at least partly hostile, requires initiative, resourcefulness, and self-confidence. Conformists wouldn't be able to cope. It is obvious to anyone with any personal knowledge of the Traditional institutes that superiors are concerned to produce priests who are self-confident, who can cope, who can deal with unexpected situations.
In an earlier post I considered Dixon's distinction between the authoritarian and the autocratic. I don't think he does a good job of it but it remains important. The structure of conformism may be confused with, but clearly isn't the same as, a strictly disciplined, hierarchical structure. Think of an elite military unit, trained to go behind enemy lines. They will be as disciplined as possible and as flexible-minded as possible. They'll weed out people with the pathological fear of failure which renders them incapable of using their initiative, and also the people who break rules just to please themselves. There is no conflict here. Discipline and routine can be a screen for the conformist to hide behind, but need not be. What specialist military training aims to produce is a focus on the objective (blowing up a bridge, say) with complete open-mindedness about means. It aims to produce people capable of thinking in unconventional ways, but good trainers will not confuse this with self-indulgent norm-violation.
It is not a coincidence that Archbishop Lefebvre was a missionary, the product of an institution, the Holy Ghost Fathers, which was, thanks to its missionary purpose, less geared to producing weak-ego conformists than others of its time. Put a weak-ego conformist in a 1930s bush-station and he would wouldn't last a week. And what do we find in the Archbishop's later career? That he was able to resist group-think, that he had the strength of character to defy the consensus, and that he sacrificed the comforts and honours of a well-deserved retirement to do what he thought was right by those below him in the hierarchy: priests, seminarians, and faithful.
To ram this point really home consider the example of the SSPX which he founded. Aren't they terribly strict and fierce? And don't they draw many vocations from inward-looking communities in which traditionalism is the norm? Well, maybe, but as I've been saying, discipline is not the same as the kind of authoritarianism, seeking conformism, we have been considering. Can this be tested? Why yes. Anyone with the smallest knowledge of the history of the SSPX knows perfectly well that the priests of the Society are not, in general, weak-ego conformists.
How so? The individualism and resourcefulness of these priests has good consequences, but to make this argument convincing to those who dislike the SSPX, let us focus on something they will be less inclined to deny: a bad consequence. Every few years there is some kind of eruption in the Society leading to the departure of a group of them, and individual priests depart on a regular basis. Some want to be reconciled with the Holy See. Some become sede vacantists. Most recently a group has renounced its affiliation for fear that the SSPX as a whole will be reconciled with the Pope. What does this tell us? That we have a group of men highly motivated by principle, and not highly motivated by the safety and comforts of institutional life, or the soothing approval of peers and superiors.
Bishop Fellay, the superior, must sometimes feel that he is herding cats. It is interesting that his talks, which appear on the internet every now and then, seek to explain and defend his attitude and policies by extended rational argument, not by banging the table or denouncing traitors. It's not a cult he's running, but a group of individuals who very much want to follow their own convictions.
The SSPX is under particular pressures because of its canonical situation. Other traditional groups, lay as well as clerical, can exhibit similar fissipariousness when under pressure of one kind or another. Particularly when things don't seem to be going well, people disagree about means to the end, and if you end up with factions advocating incompatible strategies, you can get a split. This isn't something to boast about, but it demonstrates that members are, to repeat, motivated by principle and not by the ego-soothing benefits of conformism. Personally, I'd rather deal with a group of eccentrics determined to get the job done, than the other extreme, a bunch of people who enjoy the comforts of institutional life, and are terrified of rocking the boat.
I'm not going to succeed in opening the eyes of the likes of Basil Loftus, but the next time someone links traditionalism with rigidity, I hope I have given you, dear reader, the resources to understand where that accusation comes from, what it means, and why it doesn't fit the facts. If we can point this out to the more open-minded segment of opinion, that will be victory enough.
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