Decisions... decisions

I've decided to get another cat. Well, a kitten, really. I think you can get them pretty easily from the cat shelter at Torre Argentina. It's for Winnie. I'm starting to really worry that she's bored and lonely and doesn't have enough cat-things to do.

When I first got her, about four years ago now, I think she had been exclusively an indoor cat. We lived in my little cottage in Tattenhall and even though the place was tiny, and I left the kitchen door open a lot, she wouldn't go outside. She would sort of sidle up to the door and put her little nose out for a minute, then run back into the cottage. It was a big deal the day she went outside for a few minutes. After a while she would go outside pretty regularly through the bathroom window. She would run around on the rooftops and then back. She never stayed out at night.

Then we moved to Italy and we got a place with a really huge wrap-around terrace and she was pretty happy to go out on the terrace. Then we had a flat for a year that had a garden and she loved it. She would go out every day and prowl around the wood pile and chase the big grasshoppers in the garden. Sometimes she would just sit in the sun in the flowerbeds. I was vaguely worried she'd meet with the wrong end of a scorpion, but that never happened. After a while she got into a big thing with the local feral cat. The Mean Cat we called him. He would bully her and she started being scared to go out. One night the Mean Cat actually came into the flat and beat her up. While I was there! I had to chase it out. I think this really upset her and she would only go out when I was there in the garden digging.

Now we live in this really nice flat, but it's a story up from the garden and she can't go out. I've taken her on supervised visits to the garden a couple of times and she seemed to like it, but I'm afraid to let her out into the garden alone because it would be quite hard for her to ask to get let back in. The street outside is also quite busy, more than she is used to, and I'm really afraid that if she went out she would get hit by a car.

Sometimes she likes to go into the stairwell and run up and down the stairs, but she's pretty dumb and the floors look all the same, so she sometimes mistakes the upstairs apartment for ours and sits outside the wrong door yowling to get let in. Then I have to go rescue her.

But she's really looking quite lassitudinous; I think she sleeps too much, even for a cat, and she spends too much time trying to get my attention. She needs someone to play with who's more her own size. Someone fun and energetic to beat up on and boss around. For a while, I thought I should get her some mice, just let them loose in the apartment so she can have something fun to chase and then kill, but it turns out it's pretty hard to buy live mice. Don't know why.

I thought an adult cat would just be too much for her, since she's been an only-cat for so long. So, it's a kitten.

Also, I've decided to get a total hysterectomy to get rid of the cancer once and for all.

We tried really hard to keep all the important and useful bits in there, but it turns out that I have a "chemo-resistant" tumour and there were micrometasteses in the margins, which means the entire aparatus could be infected. The doctor said there was a 2 per cent chance that there were micrometasteses in the ovaries, but that there was really no way to test for this. The only way to know whether there was cancer there would be to wait until they developed tumours, by which time I'd be in pretty big trouble. I consulted my nice English-speaking GP and he said that with the flu or something, 2 per cent is no big deal, but it's way too big a risk with a disease that will kill me. WAY.

They said I could have radio-chemotherapy but this would (probably) have the same effect ie: premature menopause, anyway. Frankly, I didn't really even bother looking up the possible side effects of radiotherapy. It just seemed obvious that the only way to be as close as possible to absolutely sure is surgery.

So, life is about to change, permanently. I was really hoping that I would be able to deal with the cancer and have things go back more or less to the way it was before, but that hope is over.

So are a lot of other hopes.

But that's the way life goes.

More later on my Third Decision, which you guys might be able to help me with.

Now, I'm going to the beach to sit around and look at the water.



~

Some day, some day soon...

Colour.


Richard Miller


I'm not ready for colour (yes, there's a U in it), I'm not even as far as charcoal. Still on pencil. But it's one of the things I've decided to live for. Getting to colour.


Pretty, pretty, pretty pictures, pretty ladies, pretty dresses...

Oh! oh oh oh!!!

(More on my List of Things to Live For later)



~

Why the Church in England is falling apart

This is from a post by Fr. Ray Blake of Brighton's St. Mary Magdalen parish. It is just a snippet from a

"letter from a Bishop to one of his priests, which basically said, "I cannot be bothered to read what you have written or to listen to what you have to say or to investigate what you are accused of but whatever it was it was wrong and hate filled."

Fr. Blake doesn't tell us the subject of the accusation, but comments simply, "It actually wasn't, it was a gentle argument trying to explain the faith".

He comments,

"I rather welcome the recent judgment that the relationship of priests to their bishops is like that of employer to employee, simply because it might bring some justice into a situation which is often quiet unjust and sometimes, as an American friend suggested, more akin to master and helot.

Those with power in the Church are often a law unto themselves, especially when they turn their back on the Church's Canon Law and basic Christian principles."

But it's not merely that these are bad men and bad bishops, heedless of the law of the Church and the tenets of the Faith. It's that they are intellectual runts. Some of them have a kind of animal cunning when it comes to protecting their interests, but other than this, well...

Think about it. It's not just that this man wasn't interested in investigating an allegation of "hate" against one of his own priests. It is the complete inability to grasp the internal logical contradiction he is making in his ridiculous rant. He "cannot be bothered" to investigate an accusation, yet "whatever it was" was "hate filled". And how, exactly, Your Excellency, have you made this assessment when you "cannot be bothered" to examine the actual material in question?

This is the current level of intellectual ability in the leadership of the Catholic Church in England.

In the lead-up to Advent, I think I will revive my "Abolish Christmas Now!" campaign. I am beginning to think that only if Christians in England are absolutely forbidden, on pain of harsh judicial penalties, from mentioning their religion in any public sphere that there is the slightest hope of saving the Faith in that country. These men need to be persecuted harshly for the belief they no longer hold and defend.



~

A lot going on

There's a lot. I've had the consultation with the doctors. The news isn't good, but it isn't as bad as it could have been and there are still things we can do to make the whole thing (possibly) go away. I can't really go into it more right now, but I thought I'd let y'all know straight up that things are still hopeful but the cancer is still there.

The chances that the next thing we do will make my cancer entirely a thing of the past are in the high 90s, but, well, things are still complicated for the moment.

But for now, I have a difficult decision to make. I've been given a few options, none of which are particularly appealing. Once I've decided what I'm going to do, it's still going to be difficult to live with and will change a lot of things more or less for the rest of my life. So, stick around, I'll go into it more as we go along.

At the moment, however, I'm actually just a bit pressed for time and for some rather unexciting, mundane reasons. I've got a doctor's appointment in the City this afternoon for more information, Q&A sort of thing, and I would have been back to you all before now but the internet at the flat died for about 30 hours. Fixed now, but we've got to run off to do more doctor-related things.

So, I'll get back to you.

Sorry, I realise now all that was kind of cryptic. But I'm in the process of making some pretty big life decisions and am trying to make them based entirely on rational and sensible things. The effort is leaving me somewhat muddled.

In the head.

You know.

Anyway, once all that is sorted out, I'll be back and we can have some tea. I might bring biscuits.



~

Art to soothe

Julio Reyes demonstrates where I want to go with

oil,


Pencil


and charcoal...

and how far I've got left to go.

No further health news. Will let y'all know.



~

First piece of bad news since the diagnosis

I'm afraid plan A has failed.

I'm sorry to say that surgery was not successful. The cancer remains in the "margins" and that I will now have to go on to the next step. Consultation on Monday to see what that will be, whether radiotherapy or surgery.

No comments please.

H

Taxonomy III

Part III

Alright let me get the category thing correct.

From your emails, I see five - is that correct? In descending order:

Trads
Conservatives
neo-conservatives (neo-Catholics)
liberals
modernists

And what of the term Rad-Trad (I know what it means) - who is defined by it? - SSPX and further along the scale, the Sede crowd?

The problem you are having is not that there are not enough subdivisions of "liberal" on your scale. Your problem is the scale itself. These terms are already defined and there IS NO SCALE.

We are not identifying a scale with extremely conservative Trads at one end and crazy "modernists" at the other. Forget about the scale. There is no scale. There is no "descending order" from Trad to Modernist. Trads are a distinctive group who are what we are according to a clear definition. Modernists are what they are because they adhere to one degree or another to a particular heresy (described by the popes are the "synthesis of all heresies") You are creating confusion for yourself with this scale business. Forget about the scale.

Modernism is a formally defined heresy that has created in the post-Conciliar Church what we now call "liberalism" because we have lacked a better, less politically derived term. Within the limitations of the extremely vague and slithery concept of "liberalism" (that is mostly undefined and undefinable) it could be said that there is a sort of a scale, from a certain point of view, and that in some respects, people who are usually regarded as "conservatives" are on it.

But please leave it there; the concept of a scale is no more use than that. If we are to use the scale idea, we might label the whole thing "Modernism", and on the "Modernism Scale" there is a gradation from people who consciously and willingly adhere to the heresy (whether they deny that Modernism is their source or not) and those who unknowingly and unwittingly have absorbed its tenets because they know no better. The former are generally referred to as "liberals" and the latter, as "conservatives".

(It is interesting to note that a few years ago, these "liberals" in the Church were more or less oblivious to the existence of Trads, while the "conservatives" hated us and in some cases did their best to eliminate and "absorb" us. Since then, the general knowledge of Trads has increased. Liberals still do not usually see us as any kind of threat and treat us with fascination as a sort of re-discovered long lost tribe, or like something legendary that they thought was long extinct. Conservatives for the most part continue to hate our collective guts, but have learned to be more polite about it, often attending the Old Mass out of attraction to its beauties and to demonstrate that they are not bigots. This is what we like to call the Ratzinger Effect.)

But from the point of view of the people on the scale, they are not on a scale at all. To them, there is no scale, but rather two camps implacably opposed to each other and locked in mortal combat. This is the point at which the scale analogy becomes useless. Conservatives do not understand that they are infected with this heresy; they do not consciously accept it.

There is no scale, there is just the heresy, Modernism, more or less consciously accepted. The scale thing is a total red herring. Because in reality, the model of two implacably opposed camps is much more realistic and useful. Though I can't stand S---, and he hates Traditionalists like me, we both know we are on the same side. I know that if S--- were ever to be presented with the fullness of the Faith, and there was some way to turn off his ego for five minutes, he would accept it. Subjectively, from his own point of view, he is not a liberal because he consciously rejects their heresy. He rejects Modernism.

That he has been unknowingly infected with it is something he cannot do anything about and isn't his fault. In this case, the subjective point of view is important. Objectively, S--- is a Modernist material heretic, but this is because the Church in the last 50 years has taught nothing but Modernist heresy and if you want to know the Faith, you first have to know you don't know it, and then go looking for it. But subjectively, S--- is a good Catholic who is striving to be as good a one as he can. His will and intentions are all correct.

The "liberals" of the Mahoney/Chittister/Gumbleton stripe would not accept the Faith if it were presented to them. They are modernist heretics, formally, and I believe that a formal declaration of this, and excommunication, is long past due. (I'm going out on a tiny, precarious limb here, because I am presuming to judge their souls, but I'm doing it for the sake of clarity in this discussion, not because I think I can see into their hearts. Who knows if Sr. Joan would convert if given the proper chance? Not me.)

The "conservatives" of the Shea/Akin/Scalia/Neuhaus stripe aren't Trads because they have never been adequately presented with the Faith in its fullness by the proper authorities. I like to think the best of them because I was a conservative myself once. I was a JPII-clapping neo-Catholic and I was angry at the liberals and wanted the Church to be restored. If you had told me at the time that I was a liberal, and a Modernist and a heretic, I would probably have punched you. My will and intention was to be a Catholic in the fullest sense. This made me a neo-Catholic conservative.

If these neo-Catholic conservatives were properly instructed by the correct authorities in the fullness of the Faith, I have great hope that they would accept it. But they won't be because of near-total acceptance of "soft" Modernism in the Church from top to bottom. In theology, we call this "material heresy" which means heresy accepted out of ignorance.

Traditionalism, therefore, is not "extremely conservative conservatism". "Traditionalist" is not a sliding term, it cannot be used as an adjective and it is certainly not part of a scale from Trad to Modernist. THERE IS NO SCALE.

Traditionalist can't be used as an adjective; it is only a noun. You can't be "more traditionalist" than someone else. You are, or you are not a Traditionalist. There could be such a thing as a conservative Traditionalist, I suppose, because "conservative" can be used as an adjective. And in theory there could be such a thing as a "liberal" Traditionalist, but the thing is what it is.

I am a Traditionalist. This totally precludes me from being "a conservative" (noun). I do indeed also happen to be quite a conservative Trad, but that is using the term "conservative" as an adjective to describe my personal style and attitudes. The issue here is the difference between substance and accident. I am not a conservative of any kind. I am a Traditionalist.

"Conservative" and "liberal" are malleable, slippery terms that can mean a great many things and are nearly entirely relativistic. You are a "conservative" or a "liberal" depending on who is standing next to you. Dolan is a conservative when he is standing next to Mahoney, but a liberal when he is standing next to, say, the late Cardinal O'Connor, who would be a screeching liberal if you could stand him next to Spellman.

(No one and nothing is "defined" by the term "Rad Trad". It's just an insult. It's an epithet thrown at anyone whom the thrower doesn't like. Normally, it's used by a neo-catholic or conservative to insult someone who he thinks is getting uppity over the Mass.)



~

Taxonomy

My correspondence with my friend (Part II... scroll down for part I):


I think I have found the core of your difficulties.

When I talk about liberals in the Church .. I mean what you have described.

When I talk about Modernists in the Church, I mean the really bad guys.

You need to forget about the scale. There is no scale.

A "Modernist" is not merely a "really bad liberal". There isn't a scale with "liberal, bad liberal, really bad liberal and modernist". Liberalism isn't just a mild case of Modernism.

Modernism is a heresy. One that was described very clearly and aggressively and successfully opposed by Pope Pius X. If you put "Modernism" and "Pius X" into Google you will be able to read what the definition is. You will immediately recognise the liberals of our acquaintance, those people who are now in charge of the Church around the world. It is a creed opposed to that of the Catholic Church. The thing that makes people like Gumbleton and Sr. Joan and Cardinal Mahoney, et al, "liberals" is the heresy called Modernism. How much of a liberal (as the term is commonly used in the Catholic media) you are depends on how much of the Modernist creed you willingly and consciously adhere to and how much Catholicism you have retained. The two things are opposed and where one is ascendant, the other will be suppressed. You can't be a Modernist Catholic.

Now, from the point of view of a Trad like me, nearly all the people who are regarded as "conservatives" in the Church right now are to one degree or another infected, mostly unconsciously, with Modernism. But they mostly don't have enough knowledge of the Faith to know it. This situation has been created by the corruption of the Church hierarchy. People have not been taught the Faith, but Modernism instead, as you and I both know. They are Modernists, but it isn't their fault, and if you told them, (when they were finished being mad at you) they would do their best to stop being Modernists.

Perhaps that is the real distinction between a "liberal" and a "conservative" ; merely that a "liberal" is a Modernist on purpose. He is someone who has consciously agreed to the tenets of Modernism and has willingly abandoned the Faith in favour of it.

A "conservative" is someone who really wants to be a Catholic, who would reject any heresy if it were presented to him as such because he wants to do the will of God in good faith. He is a Modernist but only because he knows no better. If he is one, it is because one day in the late 1960s, the Church "woke and groaned to find itself Modernist". He is, therefore, consciously opposed to, and often actively engaged in fighting "liberalism" in the Church. He is at war with Modernism, even if he doesn't know it, and doesn't know how much he himself is infected with it.

Which is why "conservative" Neo-Catholics like S--- are so angry with us Trads. Why they hate us so much is that we have learned how much Modernism has infiltrated the Church and have rejected it and are in the process of fighting it in ourselves and outside, just as he is, but we can see it in him and he can't. (I'm sorry if this sounds insufferable, but I can't help it. If you are a Trad, you will, by definition, be able to see things that non-Traditionalist Catholics can't. Unfortunately, because Trads are all fallen, it does indeed tend to make us insufferable.)

We see that he too is suffering from the Modernist infiltration. Trads want the Neos to come out of the Modernist matrix. But because the Catholic Real is so much more frightening than the Catholic Real, they can't face and react with anger at the people who are trying to get them out. (Again, I disclaim here: a lot of Trads are just pests and it is perfectly reasonable to get mad at them, but there are a few of us who really really do want to see all the poor Neos released from the prison of the Matrix.)

Very few modern Catholics know half of what the Church teaches, and if they did, it would scare them silly. Don't forget, most of them, even the "conservatives" think that feminism can be "Christianised," that it is natural and good for Church and State to be separated, that "freedom of speech" is a natural human right... a lot of rubbish, but it is rubbish upon which their entire universe is founded. It is no wonder, then, that they are scared stiff of the fullness of the Faith and get angry with Trads and call us names when we point out that they are infected with the Disease. (That and I think I mentioned Trads tend to be jerks about it.)

But imagine his position, for a moment. He wants to be a good Catholic, thinks he is being a good Catholic by accepting all the tenets of the Faith he has been told about, and by fighting the bad guys, the "liberal Catholics" who have infiltrated the Church. He thinks he is doing the will of God and working for the right side. And he is, by virtue of his good intentions and the mercy of God.

Then along come the Trads and say things like, "Oh yeah? Well, what about the Social Reign of Christ the King?"

"The what of whom?" they respond.

"Don't you know that the separation of Church and state were condemned by the Popes?"

No. He doesn't. He has never been told this in his life.

Imagine what his reaction would be. He gets his entire self-image threatened, his total self-understanding as being one of the Good Guys, along with having his entire social and political foundation yanked out from under him. He is then presented with the awful reality of just how bad everything really is in the world and the Church, and it turns out to be a hell of a lot worse than any conservative is capable of imagining on his own. No longer is he the good guy fighting a good and more or less winnable fight. Now he is himself a compromiser, a collaborator, who adheres to a set of anti-Catholic proposals in a world that is totally howling mad and rapidly turning into hell on earth.

Really, is that a club you'd want to join? I'd get mad at that messenger, wouldn't you?

(That, and the Trads tend to be jerks about it...)

A Neo-Catholic conservative is someone who loves the faith, who wants to be as Catholic as possible, but in large part has not been given enough information.

(I believe this is the default position of nearly everyone in the Church who still more or less believes what the Church teaches and wants to do the right thing. I have reservations, however, about a lot of people who have set themselves up as Professional Catholics, writing on the net about the faith as apologists or amateur theologians who write "popularising" books about Catholicism, their conversions to it and who go on lecture tours making money as a "conservative Catholic" celebrity. Once you have that much professional stake in a position, it is going to be very, very difficult to change it when you discover its limitations. This is the main reason I object to the whole world of "professional Catholicism" that you find a lot of in the US. But really, this is neither here nor there for this purpose today. In general, I believe in the good will of "conservatives".)

Many, many times, when he fully understands how untenable his position is, he changes it. And that is how many of us have become Trads. We learned about all this hidden stuff about the Faith, we learned what has really been happening in the Church and the world. We then went through an incredibly painful transition period where we learned all sorts of awful things about how the Church is nearly destroyed, and we had a big personal crisis. Sometimes we ran off and join up with the SSPX or some other schismatics or do-it-yourselfers.

If we are given to emotional or psychological instability, if wen were alone and had no one around to help, we might have a really really bad time of things and gone a little bonkers (which is why a lot of Trads are jerks). But most of us settle down, remember that God is God and owns the Church, and will work things out in His own way and that our job is to be as faithful as possible in the given circumstances. After that, we generally settle in to whatever we are doing in life, whether it is raising a family, doing our jobs or whatever, find a decent place to go to the Old Mass, and get on with life.

Understand all this, and you will have a much easier time sorting out your terminology.



~

First, define your terms

Since people seemed interested in it, here below is some more of that discussion with my friend on Catholic taxonomy. (Who, by the way can probably be classified himself as a conservative, trending Trad, as I explained to him. It is much easier to understand these things from the point of view of someone who is not on the scale at all, that is, from the Traditionalist point of view. You can't see the Matrix while you're in it.)

My friend is new to the world of the Catholic culture wars but has dived in with both feet as only an enthusiastic American can do, firmly convinced of his Constitutional rights to pronounce on any subject and eager to get things done.

He had used the term "neo-Catholic" to mean what we normally describe as a "liberal" Catholic, interchangeably. The latter of these, however, are more accurately described as Modernists, and formal heretics.

This is, of course, an area I don't know enough about to pronounce upon in any but the most casual, journalistic way. I don't have any theological training and I stand ready to be corrected by those of my friends and readers who do. (I hate disclaimers, don't you? They're such beady-eyed, rabbity things, but just this once...)

I would like to add that to define a Modernist properly, I would have to do a lot of lookings-up and asking of experts. I hope it is understood that I am always writing as an interested layman with a layman's understanding. But my understanding is a baptised one and so I can at least know that there is such a thing, know where to go to look it up, and by applying this basic catechism-level knowledge to my own observations, I can know in broad terms how and where this pernicious heresy has flourished and choked out the Faith. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you are not qualified to defend the Faith because you don't have a degree.

Moreover as a journalist and a blogger, I have more than a passing understanding where the divisions lie for the purposes of writing about the Catholic debate and the Culture Wars, on the internet. Of course, I also want to add that these divisions, these taxonomic classifications are themselves far from fixed separations. If you have studied the history of biological taxonomy, you will find that it is a science, or a study adjunct to science, that is not exactly err... exact. Over time, lots of species have been shifted around the taxonomic key as more things are discovered about them.

But the basic premise is perfectly sound and does not change. Real things, things that exist in nature, have characteristics, observable accidents that can be quantified to help us decide what sort of things they are, and what sort of other things they are related to.

Of course, people don't like to be quantified in this way, and it is especially unfashionable now that political correctness has entered the fray. I can't tell you how many times I have heard the indignant cry, "I'm not a ____, I'm just a Catholic." Well, may I suggest that in the modern Church, if that is true, then you are, most likely, simply a lazy Catholic who has never bothered to learn anything about the Faith, to discover its depths and surprises and has never had an opportunity to find out what your reactions to those surprises will be. The Church is in crisis and is fragmented from top to bottom. If you are trying to claim that you are "just a Catholic" I suggest that you are attempting to wish these realities into the cornfield, a power you do not have. Grow up and get into the fight.

I sold the other post to a friend who runs a small but famously irascible Catholic newspaper in the US, so I won't be putting it back up. But the gist, for those who missed it, was my attempt to help my friend clarify the distinctions between the various tribes of the Faith and to dispel some of his misconceptions.

To summarise, here are my main points:
"neo-Catholics," as the term is used by Traditionalist writers describing a certain strain of modern Catholicism...

- are often American converts from evangelical protestantism,

- adhere generally to and defend the sexual moral teachings of the Church but are either ignorant of or opposed to the Church's teachings, as defined by the 19th and early 20th century popes, on the proper construction of the social order, ie: the Social Reign of Christ the King

- are generally satisfied with the direction taken by the modern Church with regards to "freedom of religion" and other beliefs, but believes that a return to the traditional sexual moral teachings is essential in both the Church and society

- indulge in a selective enthusiasm for the 20th century popes, with the usual exeption of Pius X. They normally believe that John Paul II was "Great" and should be canonised

- usually know very little about the Church's struggle in Europe and the US, through the 18th and 19th century with secularists and anti-clericals

- are convinced that the principles behind the US constitution (liberte, egalite, fraternite, freedom of speech, separation of Church and state) are entirely compatible with the Catholic Faith and are usually totally unaware of the writings of the popes

- often oppose what they believe to be "the Vatican's" objections to US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and will argue vociferously that this does not constitute opposition to the Pope

- believe that the liturgical reforms following Vatican II are mostly either innocuous or acceptable, and the ones that aren't were not direct products of the Council but unapproved aberrations

- oppose "gay marriage" but believe that marriage should be an "equal partnership" between the man and the woman, don't see any problem with "natural family planning" and think feminism was generally founded on good ideas but went astray and can be "Christianised"

- usually want to be seen as a supporter of "womens' rights" and like to say, often and loudly, that "women are just as much victims of abortion as their dead children"

- are strongly clericalist, particularly when it comes to Bishops and believe it is always wrong to criticise bishops

- believe in the "reform of the reform" for the liturgy and (recently) that the two "forms" can and should exist side by side and "enrich" each other

- believe that the Second Vatican Council itself was either innocuous or a good thing, but that it was hijacked by 'liberals' and its documents distorted and misapplied

- generally hate and fear Trads, but lately have learned to be polite to them, at least while Teacher is looking.

Here is some of the rest of my correspondence with my friend (Part I):

Hi Hilary,

good to hear from you.

Saw your email [the one I posted and then sold, hjw].. hmmmm ....

I guess I was using the term in a larger sense when equating with liberal .. meaning exactly what you described .. someone opposed to the more traditional aspects of the faith. But i guess i could sub-divide the "liberal" crowd even further.

When I talk about liberals in the Church .. i mean what you have described.

When i talk about Modernists in the Church, I mean the really bad guys.

Just like with bishops, there are the Traditionalists (Burke et al), the liberals (Dolan, Chaput et al) and the Modernists (Bernardin et al).

Both of the last two are bad, just in different degrees. But which ones do the most damage - ah, now there is a question. Those with actual evil intent, or those so self-deluded, that they are being destructive while actually believing they are helping.

Jim:
OK, I begin to see where your error lies and have to say that you absolutely must stop making definitions up on your own. All the terms you are using already have clear definitions and cannot be used randomly according to your own lights. Words mean things.

Of course, as a Trad, my opinion is that a neo-Catholic, that is a "conservative" Catholic, is merely a liberal who's been mugged by reality. But he's a conservative. He has, by this mugging, changed from the position of liberal to that of conservative. He is no longer a liberal. OK? Neo-Catholic does not mean liberal, it means Neo-Catholic. The two things are not the same.

Words mean things and you can't just use them any which way and not cause confusion. It is extremely important that you do not simply start using these terms in whatever way suits your personal little fancy.

The terms modernist, liberal, conservative, neo-Catholic and Traditionalist all have definitions, meanings, (though "liberal" and "conservative" less than the other ones). Each means something different and cannot be used interchangeably.

A neo-Catholic is not a liberal in the sense that the latter term is currently understood in the Western Catholic Culture Wars. In the same way, a Traditionalist is not a conservative. (If you were to go to a party full of Trads and start to call them conservatives, you would be thought a clod and not invited back. Conservatives have ruthlessly persecuted Trads and have only recently begun to be even remotely polite to us.)

The term "Neo-Catholic" and "conservative" are almost interchangeable, but not quite, but most important is that a Neo-Catholic conservative is not a liberal. Please get this clear. A Neo-Catholic is not a liberal. At least, not subjectively according to him, and not in the current usage in the world of Catholic-talk on the internet. (Whether he is objectively, is a separate question and shall be dealt with hereafter.) The term is not used that way.

The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are the least accurate, most slippery, vaguely-defined and least useful. Unfortunately, these terms are also the ones most people are used to, and when you start using the term 'liberal' to describe people that are normally thought of as 'conservative' you will not be helping the cause of clarity. They started to be applied a long time ago, and though more suited to political discussion, have been tacked on, with varying success, to the Catholic world.

In the interests of accuracy, however, and with respect to the effort to communicate clearly, the term neo-Catholic is a great deal more descriptive, precise and accurate in what it describes than the nearly infinitely malleable "conservative". "Conservative" has become such a slippery expression as to be nearly useless, whereas "neo-Catholic" has quite a specific definition, and a clear provenance. It was first coined by the Traditionalist writers Christopher Ferrara and Thomas E. Woods Jr. in their book The Great Facade, one which I strongly recommend you buy and read. I can give you the email address of Chris, if you would like to have him help you further clarify the meaning of the term.

The term "liberal" to mean the evil Modernists who have taken over the running of the show since the 60s, is also quite slippery of course, but I would be very cautious about using it as interchangeable with "Modernist". Modernism is a clearly defined heresy, and I expect that not every one we think of when we use the term liberal (Card. Mahoney, Bishop Gumbleton, Sr. Joan Chittister, etc) is a modernist, as the term is correctly applied. But they are "liberals" in the broader sense. I suppose that you can be a liberal without being, strictly speaking, a modernist. (Whether you can be a modernist without being a liberal is a different question. I don't know enough about Modernism as it was defined in the late 19th and early 20th century to tell you.)

You are, as far as I can tell from following your podcasts over the last couple of years, moving from the position of "conservative" to that of "Traditionalist" without fully understanding what is happening, and are therefore suffering from category confusion. This is probably why you think Cardinal Burke is a Traditionalist. I'm sure he would never say so. (I think you need to understand right off the bat that there are no Traditionalist bishops alive today who hold a see or position in the Church. None. Not one. Burke is just a very very conservative conservative, who happens, like many conservatives, to be sympathetic to the Traditionalists' positions and complaints. There is a small number of Traddie priests and a larger community of laity. but there are no episcopal Trads.)

You may be suffering from the common misunderstanding that a Trad is merely an ultra-conservative. Just a conservative only moreso. But, as I see you are starting to understand, "liberal" and "conservative" are merely arbitrary labels that can be applied according to where you yourself are standing on the scale. Whether one is regarded as a conservative or a liberal depends entirely upon whom you are standing next to. Whereas "Traditionalist" is an absolute term for which there is no scale. You can't be "more Traditionalist" than someone else. It's an all or nothing proposal and a Trad can be clearly defined. You either are one or you are not. Traditionalist is not an adjective, in other words, and cannot be used as one in the way that "liberal" and "conservative" can.

In Flanders Fields (by John McRae)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
... The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

~