A Reader asks:

| | Comments (5)

"One thing I'm curious about -- leaving judgements of wisdom and quality aside, why is traditional Catholicism so much better represented in the blogosphere than other varieties?"
Do any of y'all have any insights on this?

5 Comments

I think you'd have to define what "traditional" means. Are we talking about the radTrad types, or using traditional as another word for conservative? I think I agree more and more each day with Amy's refusal of such lables. They are nearing the point of meaninglessness.

I wrote about this distinction until I was thoroughly sick of it on www.quicustodiet66.blogspot.com

I don't think it is useful to reject labels on principle. We need to make proper distinctions where distinctions are to be made and it is increasingly obvious that there is a distiction. Watch out though for pejoratives. "Rad Trad" is a nasty name that many non-traditional Catholics like to use to make people like me sound like trouble makers and schismatics.

On the actual question in the post, the answer is simple. the Internet is the one place where people can talk without being told what is OK and not Ok to say. We don't get censored here.

Yet

HJW

Hahahahahaha! I am such a hyppocrite! I just invoked Catholic political correctitude in my admonition not to use the pejorative "rad Trad" and then got all preachy about censorship! Yoiks, consistency is hard!

Hilary-I'm not using "RadTrad" as a pejorative and that basically proves my point. If the lable actually means something then great, but "orthodox", "traditional", "radtrad", etc are all used rather loosly. Some people would call me traditional though I doubt you would.

I made many efforts at the behest of others to make clear the parameters of what it means when a person calls himself a Traditional Catholic (note capitals). A lot of the differences are political also which complicates things. There are a lot of websites dedicated to this work and there is no point in my going all over it again. But it is wise to be careful of terminology, if for no other reason than to avoid confusion and the unavoidable damage it can do to feelings if not reputations. The very pious-sounding sentiment about rejecting labels sounds fine until you find out that there are very real differences that really do require careful handling and clear definitions. It is not a work of charity to ignore true things because we don't like the discomfort of facing them. Unfortunately there are many misrepresentations of the "traditional Catholic" positions. I feel very much like what Bishop Sheen said about Catholics in general: people don't really hate (Traditional) Catholicism, they have been told a lot of disinformation about it, (schismatic, disloyal, disobedient, etc) and have believed the lies. I am convinced that if the truth of the fullness of Catholicism, especially about the pre-Vatican II social encyclicals, everyone who I would currently characterize as "conservative" would be in agreement and we would indeed have no need of labels. The times being what they are, people can hardly be blamed for now knowing the whole of Catholic doctrine.

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This page contains a single entry by alicia published on March 29, 2004 11:06 PM.

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