Gnostic Traditionalism Revisited

It is only insofar as someone satisfies the conditions for rendering him or herself vulnerable to dialectical refutation that that person can come to know whether and what he or she knows.

—Alasdair MacIntyre

The inner willingness which is not closed against even the most unpleasant truth, which is really free from bias, ready to make friends with things, open to the proof of all objective existence, not looking at things through a colored lens that allows only such things to pass into the understanding as do not offend our pride and self-complacency

—Dietrich von Hildebrand

“Traditional Catholic” is a sociological category, not an ecclesial one. It is a distinction without a difference. To be Catholic is, of course, to be traditional by definition. So what does this phrase REALLY mean? It means: we are not like “those people,” meaning either outright modernists who pretend to be Catholic, or those who do not attend the so-called Latin Mass and don’t see themselves as anything but just ordinary Catholics. In short, there is no such thing as a traditional Catholic, only a Catholic. Those who self identity as such and insist that they are the only true Catholics are inner circle schismatic cultists, not Catholics. The Secret Founding of... Hagger, Nicholas Check Amazon for Pricing.

In general, gnosticism is the attitude that leads one to believe he possesses an irrefutable insight into the truth of matters of great importance, whether natural or supernatural. It is irrefutable, because legitimate authority, external evidence, or basic logic can not affect one’s certainty in the judgment of its truth. The strength and sincerity of one’s conviction is the only magisterium. Worst of all, the gnostic feels in his heart of hearts, though he may not recognize it, that he somehow deserves to know what he knows. Gnosticism is the temptation of the modern world, afflicting everyone, even traditionalists who define themselves as anti-modern.

Allow me now to try to describe precisely what I mean by gnostic traditionalism. As I see it, it is the unwillingness or incapacity to take a step back, to adopt a Socratic stance toward one’s commitment and allegiance to the traditionalist narrative and critique of the post-conciliar Church, which may be a true narrative and accurate critique, but, nevertheless, is a narrative and critique that doesn’t come to us from the Magisterium, and so does not require submission by divine Faith. Having some Socratic distance from it is not a sin, but the gnostic traditionalist thinks it is. Traditionalist narratives, explanations, criticisms, attitudes, etc. are founded on nothing more certain than fallible judgments on concrete historical and ecclesial particulars. If you combine this kind of unwillingness and incapacity to take a step back, this absolutely unyielding stance regarding one’s traditionalist allegiance, as opposed to simply having the ordinary allegiance to the Catholic Church, with an a priori and intractable unwillingness to attend even just an occasional well-celebrated, reverent Novus Ordo (for, attendance at a Novus Ordo, regardless of the quality of its celebration, constitutes “spiritual contamination,” à la Donatism), you have the recipe for the spiritual poison of gnostic traditionalism.

Of course, one can exclusively attend the Tridentine Mass, but only because it is an approved option that one chooses in obedience. It is not the case, as the gnostic traditionalist thinks, that those with different approved commitments are somehow less Catholic, or that one’s commitment to the traditional Mass doesn’t depend entirely on the Church’s pleasure to permit and endorse such a commitment, but merely on one’s own gnostic insight that this is what “true” Catholics do. Such an attitude reflects Donatism, not Catholicism, and in today’s ecclesial situation, it can be called gnosticism.

The essential mentality of the gnostic traditionalist attitude is “No salvation outside of us.” Now, one asks, has any bona-fide traditionalist group, outside of the 1958 sedevacantists, ever claimed such a thing? Of course, true heretics and schismatics rarely make explicit such damning heretical and schismatic confessions. Perhaps the most fanatical and prideful of them do, but the average heretic and schismatic tends to hold such sentiments in. However, heresies and an absence of charity are often hidden implicitly in words and actions, and a good theological dialectician can draw them out. Is there not some evidence of a no-salvation-outside-of-us mentality in the various independent traditionalist movements and personages? And even within the approved (FSSP) traditionalist milieu? For example, if one does not happen to buy a certain historical, political, or ecclesial narrative wholesale — one that is, at best, debatable, and certainly not de fide! — then, well, one is not a real Catholic, even if he happens to attend the Tridentine Mass, defend the social reign of Christ the King, and show forth abundant fruits of holiness in his life. Again, SSPXers say that anyone who attends non SSPX Masses is duped, a useful idiot of the modernists, and just not authentically Catholic. I have witnessed FSSP Catholics make their intense moral disapproval known if you attend a Novus Ordo, no matter how reverent and orthodox it may be, and no matter the legitimacy of one’s reasons. They may not declare the Novus Ordo invalid, but their practice speaks louder than their words.

What these traditionalists are missing, in my opinion, is the deeply personal and prudential nature of the judgment as to how intensely and absolutely one should embrace a particular traditionalist, historical, and ecclesial narrative and practice, for such narratives are inherently fallible, and such practices are not morally obligatory — neither comes with a magisterial mandate. Like one’s embrace of a particular theological school, one is morally free in one’s choice in these matters, as long as one remains within orthodoxy and orthopraxis.

I don’t see why any Catholic is not perfectly within his rights either to lessen or increase the vehemence of his loyalty to a particular, non-infallible, traditionalist polemic, strategy, or practice — including one’s attendance at the Tridentine Mass, whenever he judges it to be God’s will and beneficial for the salvation of his soul. Indeed, I think one is morally obligated to relax his traditionalist vehemence if he senses spiritual danger to his soul, the danger of making a peculiar brand of idiosyncratic traditionalism a universal precept of the Church, of having a greater attachment to it than to Christ and to His Church — in all her members. I think a Socratic attitude toward any of our opinions, attachments, devotions, etc. that are not clearly consonant with indisputable Church dogma and Magisterium-approved practices is spiritually healthy — even what we consider indisputable “common sense” needs to be skeptically examined once in a while.

Traditionalism has become an ideology that, even though sometimes correct in its analysis of the crisis in the Church and world, nevertheless makes one spiritually sick, as one becomes more attached to the traditionalist movement, its narratives, personages, publications, polemics, criticisms, etc. than to the Church as a whole — and to Christ Himself. The apotheosis of idiosyncrasy is a formidable American temptation. Add to this the temptations to an “inner-circle” pride, an overly critical and judgmental spirit, and an “I-am-attending-the-superior-Mass” self-consciousness. These are quite present in traditionalist circles. There is a certain fanaticism that prevents the traditional Catholic soul from experiencing deep, simple, humble prayer and self-forgetfulness. The phrase “Catholic Pharisee” comes to mind, and even if modernists and neo-Catholics hypocritically use this term against humble traditional Catholics, if it’s accurate for some, it’s accurate.

One tell-tale sign of gnostic traditionalism is a penchant for coming up with air-tight theological syllogisms that, in reality, lead to insane conclusions, yet are given as much authority as the conclusions of the Magisterium. The spiritual error at the heart of this obsession with syllogisms is the belief in the infallible certainty of one’s own private judgments, judgments that a priori cannot be certain due to their being bound up with concrete particulars. What is worse, the gnostic Catholic evangelizes his sacred syllogism as if it were the Gospel, and woe to those who do not believe in it! They are cast to the outer darkness. But how can a belief of which the truth cannot be judged by us with absolute certainty, because bound up with concrete particulars, be necessary for our salvation? Of course, it cannot, yet the gnostic stakes the salvation of his and everyone else’s soul on getting the syllogism right! “For they bind heavy and insupportable burdens, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but with a finger of their own they will not move them” (Mt. 23:4).

Being imprisoned in his own magisterial thoughts, the gnostic Catholic traditionalist is existentially isolated and alienated from the fullness of being that only intimate contact with Tradition can provide, and at the same time, he is absolutely convinced that he is deeply immersed in and in contact with Tradition. Because the gnostic traditionalist approaches Tradition with an inherently anti-traditional stance of soul — I am the final arbiter — Tradition can do little to help him, for, although he goes through all the traditionalist motions, he is not in existential and spiritual contact with Truth. He has developed a kind of impenetrable shell over his soul, exacerbated by his personal sins and his habituation in the modernist spirit of liberal culture. This shell must first be removed before Tradition can penetrate his soul, but he is too busy delving deeper and deeper into what he considers authentically “traditional Catholicism” to realize that he is digging a deeper and deeper hole to a self-created Hell.

The ultimate irony is that the gnostic traditionalist is really an ultra-modernist and anti-traditionalist, because he has put himself in a position gnostically above all received Tradition, above all that would evoke in his soul a non-deliberative, non-critical, non-analytical, childlike “fiat” to the order of supernatural reality as it is incarnated in the visible Catholic Church under the reigning Pope (if he is actually reigning), well as a fiat to the dogmatic inerrancy of Vatican II and the validity and non-evilness of the Novus Ordo Mass as initially promulgated). Sola Traditio, with me, not the Magisterium, having the final interpretive say. This is Protestant. Dom Charbel Pazat de Lys, OSB, describes how certain Catholics who consider themselves to be “against the Enlightenment” are actually its unwitting advocates:

T]here are two forms of “exaggerated conservatism,” whose aims are opposed to each other but who work things out in similar fashion: those who hold that the old Roman liturgy represents the culmination of liturgical progress, which cannot be surpassed and should remain untouched, and those who think the same about the new postconciliar reforms, as if any reform of the reform would necessarily represent a backward step. In both cases, it is assumed that there has been a complete break, whereby those who hold these views are, without being aware of this, taking a view of history inherited from the Enlightenment, which sees it not as a chain at the end of which we stand, but as a kind of display cabinet from the shelves of which we make our choice, a choice determined in the end by the man and his rational thinking. (Looking Again at the Question of the Liturgy with Cardinal Ratzinger, ed. Alcuin Reid, OSB [Farnborough: Saint Michael’s Abbey Press, 2003], pp. 100-101)

The gnostic traditionalist’s “choice” for tradition is not salvific for him, even though it may be the objectively right choice , because the choice comes from the wrong spiritual place — it is not a humble, loving, childlike fiat of Faith, but a puffed-up, hyper-conscious, modernist choice of pride. G.K. Chesterton said that “all goods look better when they look like gifts,” but the gnostic traditionalist cannot see any good as a gift, because to do so he would have to admit that he doesn’t deserve it. One can never choose a gift. The Jansenist Port Royal nuns of France were once described as “pure as angels, and proud as devils.” And Edith Stein wrote, “Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And so do not accept anything as love which lacks truth! One without the other becomes a destructive lie.” Both of these quotes are suggestive. Sigmund Freud and the ... Bakan, David Check Amazon for Pricing.

Catholics must be especially alert to the unrecognized — because much more subtle — malignant effects of having been habituated into the gnostic “tradition” of anti-tradition, infecting both the post-conciliar Church and the culture at large. Our daily immersion in the Luciferian regimes of today, with their state-sponsored empty shrines dedicated to the worship of nothing, can place our souls in an existentially alienating relation to the living Tradition of the Church, no matter how often we attend the Tridentine Mass or read pre-Vatican II encyclicals. The temptation of gnostic traditionalism is dangerous, and, because of the smoky confusion and abysmal lack of authority in the human element of the Catholic Church today, we lovers of Catholic tradition must be especially wary. We must be wary of whatever endangers our childlike receptivity to the Church’s Tradition and a sense of the “giftness” of salvation. We must be wary of choosing Tradition, like modern, self-conscious spiritual “adults.” Instead, we must aspire to receive it, like Teresian spiritual children.

It must be said: The documents of Vatican II do not, because they cannot, contain any errors in faith or morals, and the “new Mass” is not, and cannot be, in any way, evil! Both of these come under the indefectible protection of the Holy Ghost, preserving all officially promulgated dogmas and Sacraments from any error or intrinsic evil (of course, this protection does not apply to non-traditional interpretations of Vatican II teachings, and mistranslations or abuses of the Novus Ordo Missae). Traditionalists must accept this simple truth. Nevertheless, the seeming novelty of some elements in Vatican II and the Novus Ordo did provide an occasion for the faithful to seem to make a choice for “Tradition” over this seeming novelty. Lovers of Tradition have thus been placed in the eminently non-traditional stance of having to choose what is not supposed to be chosen, but only received. Even if they choose rightly, dismissing the apparent novelty and adhering to the Tradition, they make such a choice with a consciousness of being “on their own,” seemingly in spite of the guidance and counsel of those who presently rule Holy Mother Church.

It is akin to the abused teenager who must choose whether to run away from home and live on his own, or remain under the authority of his parents. There are adverse consequences consequent on both choices, but the mere consideration of such a choice is deeply traumatic itself. The false dichotomy with which Catholics appear to be faced is bound to cause psychological and spiritual disorders, even among the most good-willed and spiritually vigilant of Catholics. For the idea of being forced by the authorities of the Church into a choice whether to remain at home and suffer or run away and suffer is spiritually traumatic. Like in the case of the abused teenager, regardless of what choice is made, one feels “on one’s own” in the making of it, and such an attitude is antithetical to the kind of childlike trust Catholics should have toward their Mother. Of course, being treated with contempt by the Church’s hierarchy, as those Catholics devoted to the 1962 Mass have sometimes been treated by certain Churchmen, is an unconscionable evil. However, such evil can lead to other more unseen and subtle evils that originate in reaction to them. An attitude of “I will never allow myself to be subject to that kind of treatment anymore!” can lead to heresy and schism as much as an attitude of cowardly resignation to such treatment, and not defending our Lord when He needs defending, as the neo-Catholics have done.

It is a consciousness of having to “choose” to be and subscribe to a certain type or quality of Catholicism, whether the “new” Catholicism of the Vatican II “spirit,” or the “old” Catholicism of the pre-Council Tradition. There is a certain inescapability to this choice-consciousness: Even if one’s choice is to “remain” with the Tradition, which is the only good choice because the object of the choice is good, plain, and simple, eschewing any innovations and deviations, it is still an unnatural choice in a subjective sense, one that shouldn’t exist, and would not exist without the Church mysteriously having created the occasion for it. To me, this is the real smoke of Satan, because it gets you coming or going.

This kind of situation is deeply traumatic to the soul, and the fall out of it manifests itself in different ways depending on the spiritual and dispositional particularities of each person. It really is a “great façade,” because it is all ultimately an illusion. There really is no choice whatsoever, nor can there be. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and His Church is His body — neither can change. All there is is ordinary Catholicism. I think that God-pleasing, ordinary Catholicism can exist within the milieu of the revised Roman Rite as well as the “Old Rite.” I say, “can” deliberately, for I mean it for both cases. Some, or most, Novus Ordo ecclesial milieus are simply spiritually bad — but it is not because the Novus Ordo Mass is “bad”; it can’t be, because the Novus Ordo Mass is God-pleasing in itself, containing nothing heretical or evil, with no incitements to impiety, etc. It is, rather, because of abuses of the Mass, misbehavior on the part of the priests and people, and acquiescence to the enormous temptation to desacralize, humanize, immanentize, and horizontalize the liturgy. Irreverence, blasphemy, sloth, worldliness: these are the spiritual poisons one imbibes in a milieu that embodies the choice for the “new.”

On the other hand, some Tridentine Mass ecclesial milieus can be just as spiritually dangerous. Of course, it is not because of the Tridentine Mass per se, but because of the hyper-consciousness of “being a Tridentine Mass Catholic,” a consciousness that is, I must say, unavoidable in such milieus now that the original and traumatic choice-consciousness has infected the entire Church. It is quite unnatural and debilitating to have to fight off this consciousness, and it can have a spiritually damaging effect, with the sins of schism and pride, and the vices of paranoia, judgment, harshness, lack of meekness, spirit of criticism, Jansenism, and the like being the predominant spiritual fallout from habituation in this milieu embodying a “choice” for the old.

Gnosticism is what existentially underlies the traditionalist cult today. The core of Gnosticism is believing and acting based only upon yourself as an authority, because you, not God, are good and holy and the source of truth, but pretending to others and yourself that you are just being obedient to a higher authority, even to the highest authority. Catholic traditionalism is just this evil Gnosticism cloaked as pious obedience. No traditionalist belief or practice is held or done because the Magisterium actually commands it. There is no magisterial command to attend only the Latin Mass, or to despise the Novus Ordo, or to have 4+ children, etc, yet the traditionalists hold to these as if they were commanded and they were just humbly obeying the highest authority. No, they are obeying only their inner circle cult of spiritual superiority. Traditionalism is straight from the pit of hell.

Catholic Traditionalism is thus an ideology and cult. Its reactionary and tendentious narrative and purely human and erroneous doctrines are unquestionable and treated as reality itself, and watch out if you question them. You’ll be blackballed from the community. It has its commissars and intellectuals. It pretends to be just faithful Catholicism in its pure form, but it is nothing of the sort. It is founded upon the satanic lie that the Magisterium can call good what is actually evil. The Magisterium has definitely and infallibly called Vatican II and the revised Roman Missal good, as well as, say, NFP and the Divine Mercy devotion, but Trad Cultists insist these are evil. This is nothing less than blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the unforgivable sin, it is at the heart of the traditionalist cult.

Catholic traditionalism is now (perhaps it had a more redeeming purpose in the past) nothing but the sociological and online emergence of an elite inner circle cult, a self-justifying arbitrary fake aristocracy. Its purpose is nothing other than the completely unjustified assertion of and complacence in spiritual superiority. It’s the product of neurotic, scrupulous, narcissistic, insecure souls—fueled by pride—and it is nothing else than neo-Phariseeism. Jesus harshly condemned it when He was on Earth, and He does so today from Heaven.

There is just the magisterium, pre and post 1965, just the Church, just the dogmatic teachings, and just the approved liturgies. Preferences are permitted among what is optional, so preferring the TLM does not make one a trad cultist, and preferring the Novus Ordo does not make one a modernist heretic. But rejecting the magisterium after 1962, and refusing to be in communion with those who don’t, and rejecting the magisterium before 1962 and refusing to be in communion with those who don’t, does make one a heretic and schismatic and thus outside the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.

And it’s not just outright magisterial rejection that makes one a schismatic and a cultist. It’s also suspicion of the magisterium and its official judgments and decisions. One will only accept it if it meets with one’s approval. This is not religious submission of intellect and will. And then there is the magisterium that both trads and progressives invent in their sick minds and sub cultures. It’s a sin to go to the Novus ordo. It’s a sin not to have four or more children. It’s a sin to treat your wife as an equal instead as an inferior human being. It’s a sin for a mother to ever work for money and contribute to the household. It’s a sin to say the Divine Mercy chaplet. Ad nauseum and infernum. For the progressivists, it’s a sin to condemn sodomy.

While the “St. Typical” coastal suburban mainstream Novus Ordo parish liturgy and culture evinces irreverence, emasculating music, and hardlybsny sense of the supernatural, feeling less like a ritual sacrifice than a celebration of the community, with hardly any talk of sin (unless it be wokish ones) and the possibility of damnation, and with the “presider” acting like an entertainer; your typical TLM-only parish is gloomy, guilt ridden, scrupulous, Calvinist, misogynistic, inner circle, cultish, 4 plus children or be ashamed, reactionary, fear-based, coercive, schismatic, uncharitable, snobby, joyless, judgy, dour, and sad. Priests are cold, impersonal, neurotic, and arrogant, superior to you and needing to be treated that way, with confessions that are shaming and abusive, and homilies that are scrupulous and guilt-inducing, replete with scapegoating of “those Catholics” and cheerleading for the in-crowd.

Of course, there are parishes, priests, and lay people, both NO and TLM, that evince none of these ideological toxins, but they are the exception. Catholic discourse and subcultures, both “left” and “right”, are becoming more and more ideological. A typical “Trad” now means a neurotic and prideful ideological Pharisee who thinks having 4 or more children (which he makes sure to tell everyone every other day) and treating his wife like a a child-slave makes him superior and gives him a ticket to heaven, and who despises the Novus Ordo and thereby commits the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But the anti-trad discourse and subcultures are just as rotten, making a worldly and godless woke mockery of the Faith. Where are the normal Catholics?

If the TLM is as superior and good and the Novus ordo as inferior and bad as trads say they are, then the Church would have taught this authoritatively so we could obey it. But she doesn’t.

Jesus condemned and mocked both the Sadducees and the Pharisees, for they were man-made cults of hypocrisy and abuse. These represent the superficially opposing but deeply similar counterfeits of authentic magisterial Catholicism whose trademark is ideological idiocy: lgbtq advocacy and hell is not eternal, on the one hand, and men are superior than women and the Novus ordo is evil, on the other. The evil spirit in both is one of disobedience, pride, and elitist supremacy.

Trads have a deep seated problem with authority, which is a problem with the will, not the intellect. They are in an inner circle cult as evil and fraudulent as modernism. The more they proof text their positions, the deeper they entrench themselves in the cult. Trads are Trads because they get something from being in the cult, a psychological or emotional or social or psychological or financial good, and they place the good they are getting above the ultimate good of truth. Until they recognize this, all dialectical engagement just makes them more cultish. The problem is not logic or reason but the will. The madman, as Chesterton said, has lost everything except Logic. Trads will prooftext their way all the way to hell. L

Erudite (and not so erudite) ideologues use their redoubtable rhetorical skills and high IQs to manipulate the audience into thinking just as they do, not to help us realize the truth for ourselves. This is propaganda. Catholicism becomes an ideology. It’s not an ideology, of course, but the Truth, but these toxic personal and online subcultures cloak and counterfeit Catholic Reality. Where are the authentically Catholic communities? Chaos: Charles Manson,... O'Neill, Tom Best Price: $15.24 Buy New $15.19 (as of 06:13 UTC - Details)

Here’s a prime example of trad ideology: fertility Calvinism. Trophy wives is evil. But trophy-#-of-children is even worse. Nothing wrong with having many children, if it is a decision made with full, non-manipulating and non-coercive consent of wife and husband, and based upon Prudence. It’s not ok if the ideology behind the decision is “God demands that we have as many children as we can and as fast as possible!!” That’s neurotic and fanatical Pharisee trad ideology. Even worse if the motivation is to be part of the “cool club.” “Look, at us, we have 4+ children!” (4 is the magic number). “We are part of the elect!”

Do you think you are a better Catholic because you have more children than most? Do you look down on, say, a family of “only” 3 and think—“mid” Catholic? Do you cite your 4+ number of children in your bio as if it were a resume builder? Do you mention it at least once a day so people know you’re a real Catholic? “John Supercatholic is the father of 8.” Why do we need to know this? Why not just “John is a father and husband”? Father of three? Not so much. That’s shameful in these circles. Best not to mention it. Many classical and robustly Catholic schools and colleges doing great work for God and neighbor, are, nevertheless, notorious for having faculty bios that always culminate in the 4+ number of children brag. If it’s less than that, and they mention the number, it’s only if the couple is very young. It’s as if you can’t work at these places unless you have four or more children, or are a young couple aiming for the magic 4+.

Any excuse to announce their # of children on X: “Man, tough flu this season, All SIX of my children got it.” Not “All of my children got it”—never that. You’ll notice that Catholics in these circles or who aspire to be in them with “only” three children hardly ever announce their # because of shame, it’s just mid. It shows that you’re secular and selfish at best, and you use NFP and just don’t trust in Providence.

“Good afternoon candidate. You’re here to interview for the editor position of Trad Magazine. I have some questions for you. I’ll ask the most important one first: How many children do you have?”

“Gee, well, three. But I’m a good Catholic and I know my stuff and I’m published and….”

“Really? you’re 40 years old and you should at least have four children by now—three is just not gonna cut it. We have competition you know. The editor of John Paul II the Heretic has 10 children and he’s only 30. Now that’s a Catholic. Next!”

Seldom discussed, however, is the dysfunction of some of these big Catholic families, with neglected and abused children, many of whom act out later in life and lose the faith, or become neurotic cultists, and the tortured, mentally ill mothers. But the externals look holy! The children at some point become aware that they are valued more as trophies or resume builders or as tokens of a neurotic Calvinist compulsion to insist that one is of the elect or better than “those Catholics.” Devastating.

And you can’t challenge them on this. They hate you for exposing their cult, and they think you’re just jealous because you’re not in the fertility elite. It is precisely the Phariseeism that enraged Our Lord. It’s a bizarre Catholic Calvinism substituting fertility for worldly prosperity. Good for you for having a large family, if that’s indeed what God wanted for you and your wife. But knowing many dysfunctional large Catholic families with abused wives and neglected, thoroughly neurotic children, perhaps some NFP was in God’s plan. “But no, NFP is Vatican II! And I wouldn’t get to be in the elite 4+ children club!

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