On "Traditionalism", the Catholic Spiritual Tradition, and How To Approach Ecclesial Problems:

My words will be in regular font. Without further ado...

Where is the McCarrick report...where is the Bernardin report...maybe Bernardin/jadot type bishops are a recipe for more crime and deviancy...idk...not saying anything about bishop hicks...but celebrating Bernardin bishops is pretty damn stupid for your insurance premium as a diocese...

"Now, my children, where do you get with your impatience and your grumbling? Do your affairs go any better? Do they cause you any less trouble? Is it not, rather, the other way around? You have a lot more trouble with them, and, what is even worse, you lose all the merit which you might have gained for Heaven." [St. John Vianney]

yes, Shawn, we should just sit back and act like everything’s fine when literally everyone including those in Rome realize it’s so bad they are formulating a report to see how the rot got where it got. In the mean time we shouldn’t tread carefully.

"If the good Lord wishes to prolong the hour of trial, do not complain and look for the reason; but remember always, that the children of Israel had to remain forty years in the desert before reaching the Promised Land." [St. Padre Pio]

Shawn using Sts John vianney and padre pio to justify passively enduring a criminal deviant enterprise perpetuating itself is despicable. I refuse to believe that’s what you’re doing and instead choose to believe you think they are all gone. I thought so too. But now we have Bernardin guys and McCarrick guys rising again thanks to blasé. So hold the vianney and pio quotes. They don’t justify criminal deviancy endured passively.

"Trials and tribulations offer us a chance to make reparation for our past faults and sins. On such occasions the Lord comes to us like a physician to heal the wounds left by our sins. Tribulation is the divine medicine." [St. Augustine of Hippo]

Shawn yeah we’re not going to agree. You want passive enduring. They should be executed.

For someone who claims to be a Traditionalist, you often seem oblivious if not dismissive of the Catholic spiritual tradition. When complaining goes beyond the occasional and into the realm of the habitual, that is a strong sign of spiritual weakness. You would be wise to take greater note of these things and seek counsel from the riches of traditional Catholic spiritual instruction.

Shawn we aren’t talking about an inconvenience in leadership or an ugly statue or a new interior color we’re talking about a criminal deviant enterprise that perpetuated the ritualistic rape of children...

I am fully aware of what it is. However, that does not dispense us from striving to act with the proper spiritual disposition. And it is often not easy to do. A hint: there is a reason it is called "carrying one's cross." There is nothing of spiritual benefit by constantly complaining -especially about things we have no control over. 

When considering how to deal with bad priests following from St. Catherine of Siena's Dialogues is particularly apropo. Here is just some of what it says on the matter:

Christ on earth, then, has the keys to the blood. If you remember, I showed you this in an image when I wanted to teach you the respect laypeople ought to have for these ministers of mine, regardless of how good or evil they may be, and how displeased I am with disrespect... 

These are my anointed ones, and therefore it has been said through Scripture, 'Dare not touch my christs.' Therefore, a person can do no worse violence than to assume the right to punish my ministers... 

The reverence you pay to [priests] is not actually paid to them but to me, in virtue of the blood I have entrusted to their ministry. If this were not so, you should pay them as much reverence as to anyone else, and no more. It is this ministry of theirs that dictates that you should reverence them and come to them, not for what they are in themselves but for the power I have entrusted to them... 

So the reverence belongs not to the ministers, but to me and to this glorious blood made one thing with me because of the union of divinity with humanity. And just as the reverence is done to me, so also is the irreverence, for I have already told you that you must not reverence them for themselves, but for the authority I have entrusted to them. Therefore you must not sin against them, because if you do, you are really sinning not against them but against me. This I have forbidden, and I have said that it is my will that no one should touch them... 

For this reason no one has excuse to say, 'I am doing no harm, nor am I rebelling against holy Church. I am simply acting against the sins of evil pastors.' Such persons are deluded, blinded as they are by their own selfishness. They see well enough, but they pretend not to see so as to blunt the pricking of conscience. If they would look, they could see that they are persecuting not these ministers but the blood. It is me they assault, just as it was me they reverenced. To me redounds every assault they make on my ministers: derision, slander, disgrace, abuse. Whatever is done to them I count as done to me. 

By not paying me reverence in the persons of my ministers, they have lost respect for the latter and persecuted them because of the many sins and faults they saw in them. If in truth the reverence they had for them had been for my sake, they would not have cut it off on account of any sin in them. For no sin can lessen the power of this sacrament, and therefore their reverence should not lessen either. When it does, it is against me they sin... 

If all the other sins these people have committed were put on one side and this one sin on the other, the one would weigh more in my sight than all the others..."

In short, the more the ministers sin, the more you are to reverence them for God's sake, not their own. Perhaps if more so-called "traditionalists" and others had been doing this all along, we would not be seeing what we are seeing now. And by specifically responding to this in ways God has said He particularly detests, you are not doing your own soul any good. 

On the Ahistorical Fiction of 'Traditionalist' Liturgical Worldviews:

This was taken from a Disqus comments thread back in 2013 when the present website was suspended.

The article being interacted with can be read here:

Mass instruction: Fr. Robert Taft on liturgical reform

My words will be in regular font.

Excuse me Father but the mass is the objective worship of God, which we owe to Him as our creator, why else is honouring the sabath one of the commandments?

Fr. Taft did not say otherwise so your rebuttal is a strawman.

The Mass is meant to give objective worship to the Godhead as He commands us to do, only secondly for our edification and instruction.

You apparently missed the part of the article where he said "What you get out of the liturgy is the privilege of glorifying almighty God."

So yes, we are reading the gospel and epistles for Him and Latin is entirely appropriate, considering that all the major religions use ancient languages that are non vernacular.

Do not be ridiculous. The readings are read at Mass for the instruction of the faithful. There is no reason to read the epistles and gospel for God because He both knows what they say and is in no need of being instructed by them. The same is not the case for the people at mass.

The faithful do not understand Latin therefore it makes no sense to read the Epistle and Gospel in Latin at mass and then in the vernacular. And those who try to defend this sort of thing only come off sounding silly in the process.

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Well let me see if I get this straight, you say "... it makes no sense to read the Epistle and Gospel in Latin at mass..." when the Church has done this for well over 1,000 years?

When Latin was the vernacular tongue in the west (from the third century on), it made perfect sense. Furthermore, every educated person down to the Renaissance in the west if they could read and write knew Latin so it still made some sense -indeed Latin was the foundation for the Romance languages (Italian, Spanish, French) which dominated the west and folks who know those languages can at least to a certain extent know whats being said. But knowledge and understanding of Latin declined in subsequent centuries which created a different situation altogether -one that the church authorities banning vernacular missals until 1898 did not help with but I digress.

The bottom line is the faithful do not understand Latin very well (apart from the ordinary parts of the mass in some cases) and have not for a long time. For that reason, reading the Epistle and Gospel at mass in Latin and then in the vernacular is both unnecessarily duplicative as well as downright silly. But that is what ended up happening because of the foolish notion that developed after the Council of Trent that anything in the vernacular in the liturgy was automatically suspected of Protestantism.

So the Church was wrong for 1,000 years, but you are correct?

There is more to the Church than just the west. In the east, the liturgy was always celebrated in Greek and other languages because they were the vernacular tongues of the people. And even in the west where there is some myth to liturgical monolithicity, the Church historically made use of the vernacular in a variety of cultures. In fact, here are some of the notable derogations{1} from the norm of celebrating the liturgy in Latin within the timeframe you refer:

--Pope Hadrian II granted Sts. Cyril and Methodius a rescript to use Slavonic in the liturgy (circa 869) and Pope John VIII in 880 did the same thing.

--Pope Innocent IV granted Bishop Philip of Senj the right to use the vernacular in his dioceses of Senj, Modrus, Kirk, Sibernik, and Split.

--The Franciscan John of Montecorvino used the Chinese vernacular in the 1300's liturgically without known disapproval from Rome to do so and Pope Paul V in 1615 allowed all Jesuit missionaries to China to follow the earlier precedent.

--The Dominican liturgy (which differs from the Roman liturgy) was translated into Greek for the Dominican missionaries to Greece with the concurrence of the popes who also gave approval around the same time to translate the Dominican rite into Armenian for missionary work there.

--Subsequent to the Council of Trent, the missionaries of India were allowed to translate the Latin liturgy into Syriac for missionary work in that country.

--In the seventeenth century, the Theatine order in Georgia was allowed to celebrate the liturgy in either Armenian or Georgian for their missionary work.

--The Franciscans in the Holy Land in the nineteenth century were allowed to celebrate the liturgy in Arabic.

--Pope Pius XII allowed missionaries in India to celebrate the liturgy in Hindi.

Other examples could be noted but the idea that the Church for 1,000 years did not allow the celebration of the liturgy in languages other than Latin is absurd on its face -even if we confine it just to the churches of the Latin rite!

Prudence would dictate that perhaps the last 50 years are wrong in the face of 1,000 years of constant tradition, and the flowering of devotion and faith throughout the world.

See my previous comments to put the lie to your ahistorical fictions.

Now with the vernacular, all we see is devastation and faithlessness.

Actually, prudence would dictate that you owe faithful Eastern Christians as well as a whole host of western missionaries and popes from Sts. Cyril and Methodius and Pope Hadrian II in the late ninth century all the way down to the Indian missionaries and Pope Pius XII in the mid twentieth century a profound apology for having the temerity of accusing them of promoting "devastation and faithlessness."

Note:

{1} See the Catholic Encyclopedia Article on Derogation for details.