Talk:Traditionalist Catholicism

The Image of Palm Sunday "Tridentine Mass"

The caption on the image of a priest celebrating Palm Sunday is inaccurate, because it says "Tridentine." The image is actually from a celebration of the post 1955 rites. In the Tridentine rite, the color assigned to Palm Sunday was purple. In 1955 it was changed to red. Perhaps this picture is no longer appropriate for this article. In recent years, traditionalist communities in good standing with Rome have been given permission to celebrate the pre-1955 (that is, the Tridentine) rites. This image, which represents a transitional version of the liturgy, might become obselete.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.186.22 (talk • contribs)

You raise a more fundamental question: What does "Tridentine Mass" mean. You seem to apply it to the form of Mass mandated by Pius V in 1570. Others apply it to the variants of that form adopted by later Popes, especially by Pope John XXIII in 1962, in editions of the Roman Missal that in their titles still claimed to have been authorized by the Council of Trent. Bealtainemí (talk) 07:00, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

Both are Tridentine, but the 1955 Tridentine Mass was used during two short periods in history. Perhaps an image with purple vestments would better suit both the contemporary and historical expression of the Mass. --Valepio (talk) 21:00, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

The whole "Mass wars" thing shouldn't even be on this page beyond a brief mention. Wikipedia isn't a place to hash out theology or extremely niche areas that are better discussed elsewhere. This could easily be summarized by saying something like, "Traditional Catholics use the Roman Missal and Pontifical that were used prior to the changes in the late 1960s, with disagreements between groups on which books to use" and then cite sources that argue back and forth about it. There is no need to get into extreme levels of detail here, and detailed liturgical book discussion is really something that could take a life of research just into that topic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by G4wa5r4gasag (talk • contribs) 22:27, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

"Indult Catholic" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Indult Catholic and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 January 21#Indult Catholic until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Veverve (talk) 15:46, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

"Indult Catholics" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Indult Catholics and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 January 21#Indult Catholics until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Steel1943 (talk) 18:04, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Old archive list

See Talk:Traditionalist Catholicism/Archives for an old archive list of this page, from before the archives were rearranged. Graham87 11:32, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

Rewriting of Entire Page

This entire article should be rewritten by a neutral source. It's wildly biased and is obviously written by people within the movement who are arguing over extremely minor and inconsequential issues.

Ignored is how much this entire movement is based on literary cherry picking, endless arguments and disagreements between groups on a host of issues, and how the movement has always been centered on cult leaders and influential personalities. No diocese ever accepted Traditional Catholicism as its way-of-life, instead certain individuals took it upon themselves to create a following around their selective reading of history.

These cult leaders & influencers within this movement arbitrarily select texts from before the 1960s to compare against documents after the 1960s, but when you have 2000 years of stuff piled up, you can create anything you want (proof texting becomes infinite with this much material, so it's been perfect for all these cult leader personalities). This is now done with Youtube videos and memes. There's nothing serious going on here, it's all trickery and deception (as it's been since the 1960s with Schuckardt and the SSPX), and totally ignores the scholarship done since the 1990s that has been accepted by everyone outside of the Traditional Catholic movement.

And what of all the abuse that's happened within the Trad Cat movement? That deserves its own page for abuse common to the SSPX, FSSP, and independent groups. Much of the abuse is happening within Trad Cat marriages based on Trad Cat theology. Not to mention all the abuser priests who were able to fly under the radar by bouncing from group to group, abusing children along the way.

First off, the world "Traditionalist" implies perennial philosophy, which is something else entirely (though there is some overlap in the two, with figures such as Coomaraswamy in the mix). A better renaming of the page would be "Traditional Roman Catholic" as this is a label the group itself has generally assumed. The various names of the Mass are inconsequential and meaningless. The focus on terminology is also meaningless and a distraction. What's more important are the ideas that are common to the whole movement, and this is nearly completely ignored. When the movement got started, the focus was not on Vatican II, but was instead a worry over changes in the culture happening in the 1960s, like music, communism, and clothing. A big focus was that everyone was going to hell, and we are the "remnant church." Most Traditional Catholics are largely motivated by wanting to return to a 1950s lifestyle, and a very specific focus on certain ways-of-life practiced in the 1950s. Also there's a big focus on a small number of very specific things, which are a random selection of items popular among some Catholics in the early 20th century, such as Marian apparitions, certain saints popular in the 1950s, hand missals (a blip in time in Catholic history, but huge with Traditional Catholics), women's "modesty" clothing, anti-Communism, Marian devotions, and very specific items such as "Holy Slavery" or "Total Consecration."

Traditional Catholics attempt to claim they are holding to the "true Catholic faith" when in reality it's a very specific subculture and really a separate thing that never even existed in the 1950s like this.

G4wa5r4gasag (talk) 22:20, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

@G4wa5r4gasag: hey, welcome to Wikipedia. I see you take issue with this article for its detail and length. You are welcome to cite policies or guidelines which indicate that we've written it incorrectly, but as you'll find by looking around all sorts of disparate topics is that many articles have been written about things you might consider trivial or insignificant. On the contrary, Traditionalism has a significant following proportional to size of the whole Catholic Church, and that's fairly natural, considering that it's based on a liturgy that was celebrated by billions of people worldwide for over 500 years.

The sources herein are substantial and adequate for our purposes. If you identify material which is poorly sourced or unsubstantiated by any source, you're welcome to challenge or even remove it. If you have suggestions about condensing specifically over-detailed sections, you could also perform those edits yourself. Otherwise I'm going to say that WP:SOFIXIT applies and you haven't even really given us a rationale for your objections except for WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Elizium23 (talk) 06:52, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

One question. Where in the literature is the group referred to as "Traditionalism." I've never seen any groups use it (sedevacantists, SSPX, or FSSP) and it instead seems to be a term created on the internet only. The entire article should be renamed. Without a source, I am going to work towards having the entire page deleted, since the term "Traditionalism" is used by the literature to refer to the perennial philosophy, not Traditional Roman Catholics.

Also your opinions don't matter, so things like, "Traditionalism has a significant following proportional to size of the whole Catholic Church, and that's fairly natural, considering that it's based on a liturgy that was celebrated by billions of people worldwide for over 500 years" needs to have a source, otherwise it's pure opinion.

Why has the group settled on the Roman liturgy of that time period as the default? It's arbitrary. Why not the liturgy previously? What is the first 1500 years ignored? The liturgy wars and studies have shown it's arbitrary to follow the 1962 books. You know as well as I do, the whole reason this was created was that the people at the time thought the papacy was empty, so they were holding onto the pre-Vatican II liturgy, because they were waiting for a new pope to fix things. The whole thing was created by only a handful of cult leaders, so it's hardly this widespread thing as you claim. It's nearly all based on the ideas of Francis Schuckhardt and SSPX of the 1970s, everything after that largely derived from these handful of people. G4wa5r4gasag (talk) 19:29, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

The Trad Cats like to focus on "masonic infiltration" around Vatican II, and this idea becomes widespread because of youtubers and influencers like Taylor Marshall, who have a selective reading of history. They are ignoring the huge amounts of scholarship done by secular and church leaders, who studied liturgy, sacraments, and all kinds of things from the past. All of this literature is either dismissed out-of-hand, or is mischaracterized and dismissed. Trad Cats wants to pretend like all of the changes were just from infiltration, and deny that much of it was based on scholarship. Much of the scholarship has only happened since 1990, but even the earliest scholarship was really only being done in the 19th century. Some topics had been brought up by Protestants, such as forgeries in the middle ages, which Trads fail to mention. Biblical forgeries are ignored by Trad Cats, who simply blindly push the Douay version, just ignoring all modern scholarship entirely.

All this selective reading of history and dismissal of scholarship should be noted as core features of the Trad movement. I'm not sure if The Vatican or other scholars have studied the Trad Cat movement, but I'm assuming someone has noted that cherry picking historical records is a huge part of the movement. Other things to note are how they have a serious focus on certain saints and devotions that were popular in the 1950s, so there's a serious focus on a handful of saints (e.g. St. Dominic Savio) whereas huge numbers of saints through history are rarely or never mentioned. The movement is also geographically constrained, it's largely focused in America & France, with small amounts in Mexico. In much of the world, the Trad movement doesn't exist. The internet has caused much of this ignorance and nostalgia to spread, and I think this should be a noted feature of the movement too, because without mass media, the Trad movement wouldn't exist.

Trad Cats also hold to a very specific costume, notably the mantilla, which was popular with Spanish missionaries to America, but it's become the default costume for women. Or things like a coat and tie for men, that was simply a costume popular in early 20th century America (and continues to be popular fashion among politicians and lawyers), and is insignificant to Catholic history. Throughout much of church history, a mantilla would've been considered immodest, as saints had required opaque head coverings. These are important points to note, as Trads constantly misrepresent the past, as they don't want people to know they're simply following a very specific version of American 1950s Catholicism, but now with youtube and twitter. G4wa5r4gasag (talk) 19:51, 6 August 2022 (UTC)