Contemplating Returning to my Diocese

[Miriam_M]

The fruit of my own Lenten meditations was the revelation of the shocking difference between traditionalism as practiced in the city and as practiced in the suburbs.

I do not understand what you mean by City trads?

I guess you are referring to US cities. I have not really noticed much difference but maybe somebody from the UK (with experience of city Masses) knows more than me.  I have been based about 40 miles out of London for the last 25 years in a big town (probably similar to somewhere like Rochester NY).

I did not really notice any difference but then maybe the UK is different.

LOL.  I'm sorry I confused you. As I backtracked a little on my post, I think this really is about specific locations and not whole categories.  However, I do think it might be true that in many cities (maybe not Chicago), there are proportionally more singles than families, and of course for lots of reasons. 

Some of the happy, healthy families in my "city parish" have moved to different states, or to rural or suburban locations, and partly out of the same disgust I registered in my post:  avoiding raising children around lots of "weird" and/or unhappy people -- which is a completely separate problem from the questionable "morality" that U.S. cities tend to teach the young.  Second, those formerly affiliated families want to be around other families!  Duh!  Of course they do. It's healthy, normal, and natural. Some singles also want to be around other families, but in our location, far more of them show no interest in the few families that have been there.

It's certainly not weird to be single or to have the misfortune not to be among a family oneself.  What is weird is being unable to relate to other people (socially dysfunctional), and what is unhealthy is for a critical mass of unhappy people to dominate a parish "culture," "wearing" their unhappiness as if it passes for virtue/holiness. That's a different dynamic than simply the reality of individual crosses.  There's a certain clinging to misery and rejection of joy as somehow suspect that I find unhealthy for my own soul. 

In fact, the mere questions raised by clau clau and lauermar confirm the "weirdness" of my city parish as atypical of trad parishes in other cities, but I guess my point is that I don't think there's any need to be a part of a community that gives off unhappy vibes. Compassion for others is very different from indulging their gloom.

I'm glad this pattern near me is not necessarily present elsewhere. To be clear, the parishes in nearby cities to this parish also exhibit this same atmosphere, so I think it's more regional and perhaps reflective of a certain demographic.

I grew up in suburban parishes but visited city parishes enough to be sufficiently acquainted with each.  I did not observe such differences then, even though I could see differences in the populations that composed those parishes. The city parishes then were not bastions of misery, so perhaps this is also a matter of a different "era," one with much less hope.

[Miriam_M]

What do you mean by "virtue signalling"? I am unfamiliar with that phrase.

Vir-tue  sig-nal-ing:

the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.

Example in my parish, where there is over-the-top virtue signaling:
People announce that they are doing X because it's the charitable thing to do or not doing Y because "it wouldn't be charitable."  Often this is done to subtly contrast one's own actions and supposed intentions with what someone else is doing, saying, etc. By definition, virtue signaling requires an audience.

  ("Wow. If only I were as holy as you.")

[Philip G.]

I had to look up "LARP."  That's how un-with-it I am.

Same here. 

[King Wenceslas]

Being a Catholic in this day and age is holding to the entire faith taught up until October 1958.

At this point and time where you get the sacraments is between you and the Holy Ghost. Receive them from a CATHOLIC priest. If he says one thing heretical, walk out right then and there. I did that just a few weeks ago. Churches and dioceses are irrelevant in this day and age of whole sale apostasy. God does not expect you to become a boiled frog at this late stage of the great apostasy.

Good luck!

[james03]

The UK isn't different. My parish is St.John Cantius in downtown Chicago, a Canons Regular parish. It is neighbor to Holy Name Cathedral, whose vicar is Cardinal Cupich. They practice a different religion from SJC, which brought me into tradition. Tradition isn't gentrified according to voting blocks. Chicago has many traditional parishes.

  My daughter and her husband go there.  Very successful place.  Beautiful church.  I went to Mass there.  Their pro-life group evidently owns 3 coach buses.  Nice parish and exploding in growth.

Getting back to the O.P., Trads are a mixed bag, but majority good people.  I found that there tends to be a north/south divide, where the southern trads are more laid back and the parishes more social.  I went to a diocesan trad parish for a long time, then switched to FSSP.  No real difference in the laity, both good people.  I've been to some norther trad chapels that were nuts.  SJC is not that way, it's a good place.  My brother goes to a southern SSPX chapel.  Nice people.  I personally consider myself SSPX, but I'm kung foo Trad like Greg.  I don't know anything about Euro-trads, but the French trad lasses are hot.

[diaduit]

I dunno, I barely have enough energy to get my children to Heaven and praying for my husbands conversion never mind my neighbours who are stubborn in sin, stubborn in liberalism and are not happy unless they are telling me everything I'm doing wrong. 

I have two friends left after Covid, the rest are hiding under their bed from the virus and don't want to hear anything I have to say.  All my husbands family, 7 sisters and his mother are death con level scared of Covid and are racing in for the vaccine.  My mil who doesn't want the vaccine but is being pressured into taking it, told me the other day , "I think I'll take it", in a very assertive way.  I have given her all the information I could and talked to her frequently but when she said this I replied ," its your decision".  She's not happy I didn't engage with her but all she wants is the pretence of a debate and she will still proceed with it anyway. 

Dellery, sorry but there is only so much hand holding a person can do and when they repeatedly mock, scold, argue, spit at you practically then what can you do.

When do you say enough!! 

[Elizabeth.2]

Being a Catholic in this day and age is holding to the entire faith taught up until October 1958.

At this point and time where you get the sacraments is between you and the Holy Ghost. Receive them from a CATHOLIC priest. If he says one thing heretical, walk out right then and there. I did that just a few weeks ago. Churches and dioceses are irrelevant in this day and age of whole sale apostasy. God does not expect you to become a boiled frog at this late stage of the great apostasy.

Good luck!

Viva Christo Rey

[dellery]

What do you mean by "virtue signalling"? I am unfamiliar with that phrase.

If you mean to imply that traditionalists are insincere, I don't think your assertion is fair. I suspect that even the non-believing traditionalists are sincere to some degree: they are sincerely drawn to beauty, and they sincerely hate liberalism. I don't think it's a mere ruse to draw attention to oneself or to make oneself appear "cultured"; I think there's a sincere love of traditional culture, even among apostate traditionalists. (And unlike LARPing, "traditional culture" is something real. It's the living remnant of how the world used to be and how the world ought to be. This is quite different from living in a fantasy world.)

My Holy Week meditations revealed that those who believe, those who love their neighbors, are also very jealous of them, and will sacrifice their lives for them. Trads make Ninevites of those who do not share our ways and beliefs, and we are about to get swallowed by a beast. I'm done confining myself in the safety of Trad isolation. It's hard to believe Our Lord will care at all how pure you've kept yourself while apathetically watching your neighbors be lead off to hell.

The way I picture it, we are at a time in history when there is a particular need to preserve tradition. Hence the "trad isolation", as you put it. But it would be less isolated if more people were to buy into it.

I think you bring up a good point about "apathetically watching your neighbors be lead off to hell". Many trads see the problems but don't do much, other than sit around complaining or ranting online. And many trads don't proselytize enough. Still, what you're suggesting is basically that we surrender.  How will that help?

It's also not only about proselytization. The liturgy itself is the thing that calls down the graces necessary for conversions. But if we abandon tradition, there won't even be an intact liturgy anymore.

Traditional Culture is not real anymore as it's not cultural. The only reason why some people can practice "traditional culture" is because we have no culture, and the immense wealth of the West allows us to individually isolate because we don't have to rely on our neighbors for anything.
So, yes, it is a LARP. Instead of trying to change the culture ourselves, which we have ample power to do, we isolate and pretend, in many cases, to be 19th century intellectuals.  The priests and Bishops of the SSPX have been totally derelict in letting this stupidity perpetuate, and bear the brunt of the blame for Trads being a bunch of crybaby weaklings. People with a fraction of the numbers as we do have made great strides in influencing our nation to their benefit, so don't even try to say we can't do the same.

Tradition needed to be incubated by the SSPX, and they did a very good job of that, but now they're a ship adrift at sea.
We are supposed to burn as a light for others, not to hide our goodness for the sake of preserving it. Christ Himself has said this!

I'm not talking about surrender, or assisting at the New Mass, but going back to the Diocese where my Ordinary allows the Institute to operate.

People nowadays don't give a damn about proselytization or your words, they know from their own introspection that such things are meaningless and empty from our spineless, pleasure seeking, people.

The only thing that can get through to people is action, and it's the one thig many Catholics, especially Trads, refuse to do.

[dellery]

Dellery, sorry but there is only so much hand holding a person can do and when they repeatedly mock, scold, argue, spit at you practically then what can you do.

Better pray Christ doesn't feel the same way towards us.

[Heinrich]

Dellery, in all sincerity, I would like to ask you what you are doing. Please be specific and share measurable, tangible examples that can help us.

[james03]

I'm not talking about surrender, or assisting at the New Mass, but going back to the Diocese where my Ordinary allows the Institute to operate.

ICKSP?  That would be Trad.

[james03]

Getting back to what I was describing, I found out my FSSP parish is having a young adult get together with pizza and volleyball this weekend.   18-25.  I will bet that a vast majority of the young adults in that group are going to get married to other Trads, and that they like the Parish because it is social, so they will stay Trad.  And we'll get even more Trad babies and baptisms.

Places up north people would be accusing any attendance at a Trad get together like this to be mortal sin.

Mixed bag.

[dellery]

I'm not talking about surrender, or assisting at the New Mass, but going back to the Diocese where my Ordinary allows the Institute to operate.

ICKSP?  That would be Trad.

Yes. It's basically Diocesan since it only operates with the permission of the Local Ordinary.

[james03]

You might have been in some sort of splinter Trad group or something.  ICKSP have good parishes.  The Masses are very good.  I went to a few of their Masses in an old cathedral in St. Louis and they were the best High Masses I ever attended.  I even told people I could sell tickets to it.

I went to the ICKSP Mass in Chicago in the basement chapel of the old cathedral they are renovating.  It was packed with young people.  I didn't have time to get the vibe after Mass, so can't comment on the social side.

And you might be in an area where there are a lot of bunker Trads no matter where you attend.  The Trad movement was a Gen X thing, and our goal was defensive: preservation.  Gen X kids are more on the offense, being more social and trying to grow it.  I'm happy about that.  I think we are just starting an explosive growth phase.

TL; DR:  The ICKSP is solid.  You should have a good Mass experience.  Don't know about the social side.

[james03]

Viva Christo Rey

Que Viva!

Also, check out the Sanfedisti.  They actually won one.