Why be a traditional Catholic ?

I was born during Vatican II. My earliest memories are of the incessant liturgical fluctuations of the
1960s and of adults discussing their reactions to “the changes”. Too young to reason, I could yet
appreciate beauty and experience displeasure at its relentless disappearance. By the age of six I was
inwardly siding with elderly parishioners who disfavoured “the changes”, and when I learned, at eight,
to serve the (brand new) Novus Ordo, the cynical remarks of my instructor about the dark tridentine
days that had recently ended awoke in my young soul a reaction exactly opposite to the one intended.
But the grace of finding liturgical novelty repugnant would not, of course, have saved my faith if I had
received no instruction beyond what “Catholic” schools and “Catholic” churches offered. Adolescence
found me lapsing into indifferentism. I could see that the Novus Ordo religion was neither beautiful
nor true. But the impression I had been given of the Catholicism of the previous nineteen centuries
suggested to me that, though beautiful, it was not wholly true either.
I owe the survival of my faith to my mathematics master’s decision to neglect quadratic equations long
enough to supply what our religious instructors were failing to teach us. Thus I was about fifteen when
I first encountered the rigorous apologetic proofs which convinced me of the Church’s divinely
guaranteed infallibility. And no sooner did I see that the Church taught inerrant truth, than I
apprehended that the clergy I knew had deliberately concealed this truth from me and did not
themselves believe it. The discovery, at about the same time, that even on purely scientific evidence
the theory of evolution is false habituated me to distrust of the apparent consensus of experts and to
subject all unproved claims to careful critical evaluation. My journey towards a fuller understanding of
the doctrinal and liturgical revolution and a definitive rejection of any participation in any of its works
and pomps was now well under way.
But while my personal odyssey may illustrate my reasons for being a traditional Catholic, those
reasons need to be stated in objective terms: here is my brief attempt.
There is only one good reason for believing in God: it is that God exists. There is only one good
reason for being a Catholic: it is that God founded the Catholic Church and no other. There is only one
good reason for believing what the Catholic Church teaches: it is that the Church infallibly teaches the
truth. There is only one good reason for being a traditional Catholic: it is that to be a non-traditional
Catholic is self-contradictory, like being a square triangle.
To save our souls, the Catechism tells us, we must worship God by believing what He has revealed
(Catholic doctrine), by hoping for what he has promised (the immediate, supernatural and everlasting
vision of God Himself in Heaven as the reward of holiness of life here below) and by loving Him with
that supernatural charity which finds its perfect expression in the Catholic liturgy and in the practice of
good works.
Now the Church of Vatican II does not as a matter of fact show any interest in saving our souls. It does
not teach us how to save them, nor does it furnish the means of doing so. Statistics confirm what
intelligence predicted from the start of the rejection of tradition: no more effective means has yet been
found of killing faith, hope and charity stone dead than the New Mass and its bodyguard of heresy and
sacrilege.
Even informed non-Catholics can see that Vatican II and its fruits are not Catholic. The difficulty for
many has been to see that the Church herself has not deviated (impossible!) but been deviated from.
We must cling ever more tenaciously to the true Church as we reject ever more energetically the
counterfeit Church of Vatican II.
The Catholic Church has always professed to possess by divine right a true monopoly of revealed
truth, the means of sanctification and salvation, and of worship worthy of God. The counterfeit Church
is commendably prompt to profess that it has no such monopoly. In doing so it admits that it is just
another sect in the maelstrom to which man’s attempts to improve on the religion revealed by His
Creator have given rise.
Of course, you don’t have to be a traditional Catholic. It’s just that the only other choice is suicidal.
The suicide of the mind succumbing to subjectivism and relativism; the suicide of the heart given up
to insensibility or sentimentality; the suicide of honour by craven cowardice; the suicide of our
transcendent awareness by naturalism; the suicide of the immortal soul condemning itself to
damnation — the only destiny possible for those who fail in man’s first duty: to worship God by faith,
hope and charity in the Church He founded.
© John Daly 2010