#347: What is a “Traditionalist”?

EXCERPT:

In all my years, I have never before had to defend myself on this particular charge!

In early November one of my blog readers charged me with being a peculiar kind of backsliding traditionalist:

You've become a "traditionalist"! That's right, a "Spirit-of-the-Council Traditionalist"! … nostalgic and reactionary, bewailing the impending loss of their venerable patrimony of almost five decades…I think what you are really mourning is the inevitable death of the Spirit of the Council. Hence your nostalgia.

On its surface, this charge is silly enough to be ignored. But on second thought, I realized it might provide the opportunity for some more substantive reflections on the term “traditionalist.” What, after all, does this really mean?

Am I, after all, a “traditionalist”?

Yes I am, if “traditionalist” equals an outlook that embraces Roman Catholic tradition at its core and attempts to persuade other Catholics of its meaning and value--especially in the face of widespread popular illiteracy about tradition on the part of many Catholics.

Any “tradition” is, of course, a human living reality: the process by which each generation shapes its legacy for its children by guarding some things their own parents left them, changing other things, dropping some things altogether, and adding some things of their own. This enables a human family--or a family of faith --to build a developing wisdom and richness based on present experience, the clarity of hindsight into the past, and the need to meet future challenges which the past never knew. Certainly 100 generations of Catholicism have produced a version of Christianity vastly different, and more developed, than the version known by the 1st, or the 10th, or even the 50th generation of Christians.

Built into tradition, however, is a risk: in passing from one generation to another, something essential may be lost, or its meaning distorted. This may even disturb the core of the tradition--the basic foundations that support the entire, developing structure. It then falls to the “traditionalists” to retrieve such essential core elements and restore them to their place as pillars of the tradition.

This in turn requires reviewing many elements of our Catholic heritage to correct serious misconceptions, often rooted in generations of bad education.

What are some examples of such review, retrieval, and restoration in the last 50 years? Let me cite some examples that have been especially important to me during my own lifetime. [These examples can be found in the full-text version, available on request]…

The simple fact is that my grandparents would not recognize today’s Catholic Church, mostly because, in its teachings and practices, it has restored the core of our tradition to its rightful place, often after generations of misplaced priorities, misconceived beliefs, and even distorted teachings.

If “traditionalist” means anyone happy with this historic transformation, and distressed that too many Catholics, despite these advances, still cling to a distorted version of Catholic tradition, then yes, I am a “Traditionalist”—and proud of it.

#346: A “Small” Crisis Recalled

EXCERPT:
Sometimes small events carry big lessons.

This week marks the anniversary of a sudden crisis that nearly shoved a small Catholic college off its foundations. That crisis, as chronicled in Diane Brady’s book Fraternity (due January 3 from Random House), demonstrated how complex moral conflicts can be solved: by the relentless healing efforts of the participants.

…

In hindsight, the recipe for the brewing crisis seems obvious. Picture the context of fall 1969, when US campuses were tinder-boxes for protests over the Vietnam War, civil rights, and social justice in general.

Add a nationwide, months-long strike by General Electric workers. (It happens my father was the local president of one of the striking unions; I ended up substitute teaching two days a week and still needed a waiver on my tuition bill until year’s end).

When GE recruiters arrived at Holy Cross on December 10, student protesters blockaded the interview rooms, declaring (1) their support for the striking workers and (2) their opposition to GE’s “war profiteering” defense contracts. The dean of students ordered protesters to disperse. When they ignored him, he asked the recruiters to leave and told his staff to round up the usual suspects.

The trouble is, that roundup, which yielded 16 names, included 4 out of the 5 black students participating. When pressed to explain why 80% of the blacks were targeted, while 80% of the white participants were not, the dean explained that the black students were “highly identifiable”!

When a judicial board met to consider charges against the named students, the Black Student Union (BSU) convened an emergency meeting, unanimously agreed that racism was involved, and sent an officer to advocate for the black students.

He returned to the BSU convinced the board was unsympathetic, so the group began to consider its options. Among the actions discussed, the option finally agreed upon came at the suggestion of one student, future US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas: if the board refused amnesty, all black students would simply leave Holy Cross. For good.

Apprised of this, Fr. John Brooks (mentor to black students and future Holy Cross president) invited two BSU officers to a 1:30 AM meeting with President Father Raymond Swords (himself Brooks’ mentor), but Brooks failed to broker a “middle ground” all could accept: Swords was not prepared to overrule the judicial board.

One hour later, at 2:40 AM on Friday, December 12, the judicial board voted to suspend all 16 students for the academic year. BSU officers immediately announced a press conference for 10:00 AM. Appearing before 600 students, BSU spokesman (and later 2006 National Lawyer of the Year) Ted Wells decried the board’s decision, and said the black students felt compelled to walk away from Holy Cross. Then the black students picked up their luggage and departed en masse.

…

During Saturday and Sunday, December 13-14, the president’s advisory board held marathon sessions, during which Fr. Swords expressed no opinions but absorbed the entire debate.

Meanwhile a campus-wide forum in the student center’s main ballroom staged a parallel marathon. A town-meeting style “open microphone” allowed dozens of faculty and students to comment on the crisis, its implications, and the options for responding.

…

At 6:30 PM on Sunday, December 14, Fr. Swords arrived at the ballroom forum to announce his decision. Unknown to him, the students gathered had already achieved consensus that (1) they would receive the president politely as “Christian gentleman,” and (2) if the suspensions were not lifted, they would quietly exit the hall and join the black students by leaving school.

Fathers Swords was received with a standing ovation. When silence returned, he announced amnesty for all 16 students, and the crowd again rose in applause and cheers. When calm resumed, he further announced (1) the suspension of all campus recruiting, (2) the suspension of classes and exams before Christmas, and (3) the opening of a “free university” to discuss the lessons of the crisis and consider the future shape and course of the entire campus community.

As cheering broke out again, a BSU spokesman took the microphone to announce the black students would return to campus.

What might have been a disastrous setback for New England’s oldest Catholic college became instead a turning point in my senior year and the school’s history. The black students’ courage, Fr. Brooks’ relentless efforts at reconciliation, Fr. Swords’ ability to cut through chaotic circumstances to discern the signs of those difficult times, the student body’s awakening to an education that transcended the classroom--all these efforts were needed to make peace possible.

…

For the world outside reading the national headlines, this may have seemed merely a tempest in a teapot. For those who lived through it, this became a defining moment for our view of faith, justice, education, and the place of conflict in a complex and changing world. Big lessons indeed from such a “small” event!

#345: Finding God at the Movies

EXCERPT:

When I visit France annually, I’m always on the lookout for any signs of spiritual life in a “Catholic” country which seems nonetheless content to seek the good life without needing the “good news” of the gospel message.

But one place I never expected to detect a spiritual resurgence was in French movie houses. After all, why would anyone expect film to provide an antidote to secularism?

Whenever I am in France, I am constantly seeking good films to see--my first Parisian purchase is always “Pariscope,” the magazine-style guide to each week’s movies. So one afternoon in November I sat on a café terrace pouring through Pariscope for movies I might want to see. (Even though I average of film a day, selecting a dozen top priorities is a challenge in a city that averages more than 200 movies a week!).

Half way through my search, my mental antenna went on alert before I even knew why. As I kept reading, my awareness caught up to my intuition: it seemed that the list of current movies included a surprising number of “religious” films. Looking closer, I noticed other films which, while not about any particular religion, nonetheless focused on spiritual themes.

In all, I found 14 movies with overt religious or spiritual themes, all playing in one city in a two week span. And the city happens to be one of the great bastions of modern secularism!

For me, this list reflects three significant trends in western culture--trends that help explain why religion may be gaining new public interest.

First, the globalization of cinema. This list includes movies from Mexico, Lebanon, Turkey, and Tunisia--lands where modern secularism is not as dominant as in Europe or even the US. It can be tempting to think that our own experience a shared by everyone--that our struggle with secularism, materialism, and consumerism is the same as theirs. But it just ain’t so--and cinema offers a window on the rest of the world that enables us to see how their experience is unlike ours. Often this means discovering that religion remains a vital dimension of life in most of the world. Unfortunately, few Americans ever see movies from outside America.

Second, the rise of Islam has convinced Europeans (and especially the French) that they were wrong to predict, in the 20th century, that religion was about to disappear. Islam’s vibrance (especially in Paris, the city with the west’s largest Arab population) makes religion in general seem more current and relevant. It is no accident that four of these films were directed by a Muslim, for Islamic views are rapidly establishing themselves in mainstream western art.

Third, the feminization of cinema. Forty years ago, female directors were virtually unknown (aside from the godmother of women directors, Agnes Varda). But 10 of these movies were made in the last 5 years, and women directed four of them. Is it merely coincidence that nearly half these recent spiritually-focused movies come for women? I think not. In a world where 85% of US parish workers are women, where men dominate the statistics on violence, crime, and war, where women continue to shoulder the main burden for nurturing the human race (even as they entered the “productive” sector), where men dominate the statistics on violence, crime, and war, where women and children continue to suffer disproportionately as victims of most social ills--is it really surprising that women would focus on spiritual values in their art? The image from Il Etait Une Fois en Anatolie applies here: picture women working across religious differences to promote their common spiritual values against the prevailing material values of a dominantly male world!

I was lucky enough to see five of these films during my recent stay. They were a source for me of both hope and inspiration, for they suggested to me that, despite all conventional wisdom to the contrary, both movies and religion are alive and well and living in Paris.

#344: African Gothic? Yes!

EXCERPT:
I expected to arrive at Notre Dame de Paris around 10:30 for an 11:00 Armistice Day ceremony (traditionally, the solemn chanting of Te Deum), and I guessed that, aside from the usual tourists, the congregation might be sparse (no veterans of the “Great War” of 1914-1918 survive, and this year’s anniversary--the 93rd--was not a round number that might command special attention).

Instead, I found the cathedral jam-packed and a homily already underway. The main area was blocked off, so tourists could only pass around the side aisles. It was a 10:00 Mass, and the congregation was largely black, mostly women, and many in the bright colors of traditional tribal garb.

The homily (offered by the Archbishop of Paris) was projected on HD flat screens every 10 yards long the side aisles of the cathedral. I made my way up the aisle with the tourist flow, circled counter-clockwise round behind the altar, and stopped on the far edge facing back across the sanctuary to the nave.

This was the annual Paris celebration in honor of the French overseas dioceses of Antigua, Martinique, and Guadalupe. This was, however, the first time this Mass was celebrated at Notre Dame.

The rest of the Mass was punctuated by the loud, rhythmic, drum-driven music of a large choir singing upbeat multi-part hymns in both French and the creoles of their respective countries. Most of the hymns were high energy island melodies, with the exception of a gloriously harmonized Creole lyric set to the tune of “Amazing Grace.”

As Mass ended, a bishop rose and drew loud applause and warm laughter by noting that, without doubt, this was the first time a black bishop had spoken to his people from the sanctuary of “This beautiful cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris.”

As I listened—just minutes after holding black hands on both sides of me during the Our Father, exchanging signs of peace with these French Africans, and filing up with them to receive Communion in this great monument to Catholic faith—I found the moment almost unbearably moving.

This cathedral is, after all, the crowning product of medieval Christendom, an era when the Catholic tradition achieved a remarkable integration of imperial customs (inherited from the Roman Empire) and popular culture. The result, in Gothic architecture like Notre Dame, created spaces that soar heavenward with impossibly “light” stoneworks in which walls and pillars are but bit players supporting the real stars: the fragile and flamboyant stained glass windows that make up much of surfaces. Those “Vitraux” were, a Charlemagne said, “The catechism of the people,” who despite general illiteracy provided the heroic and expert labor that made these marvels possible.

Notre Dame and its sister cathedrals across Europe are thus among the chief glories of Christendom, which was itself Catholicism’s first attempt to go global by attaching Catholic faith to Latin culture.

That culture, of course, was imposed by European Christians on most third world colonies--witness these French-speaking Africans. But once decolonization began, the dream of a permanent global Euro-Latin culture was doomed, and the “Christendom” project with it.

Enter Vatican Council II (1962-1965) with a new idea: rather than tie Catholicism’s global reach to a receding European culture in a post-colonial age, why not equip Catholicism to thrive in all cultures? Why not, for example, expand beyond Latin and Gregorian chant and western polyphony as the sole liturgical options to embrace all the languages and musics of the globe?

Because of that new idea, I got to witness, on this day, this vibrant liturgical celebration from three third world cultures--here, in this bosom of Christendom! Far from violating the wondrous gothic beauty of Notre Dame Cathedral, this heartfelt celebration lifted hearts much as the flying buttresses lift the stone--and the brilliant bright costumes seemed fitting reflections of the brilliant blues and reds, yellows and greens of the cathedral’s great rose windows.

This celbration broadcast the unmistakable message that Catholic tradition, already 100 generations old, can without warning burst forth with the youthful and holy spirit of a new generation, and thus give new life to this beautiful space which we inherited as the legacy and faithful gift of another Catholic generation, now long gone but not forgotten. Just as that generation’s genius crafted the stone, the sculptures, and the glass, this generation is crafting its own monuments to faith in music and dress.

There is no place on this earth quite like the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris, and in all its years it has never witnessed anything quite like this.