Cruel and Unusual Punishment

One of the characteristics of a functioning civilization is a sensible legal system. A sensible legal system is that which metes out justice equitably, without partiality. The manifest and hidden costs to a society where a society lacks the ‘Rule of Law’, where laws are either not just, or not justly applied, are tragic. From delapidated infrastructure, to breakdown in civil order, every citizen in a place where the law is disrespected feels the damage to the common good. The bonds which are made between people are broken in these situations, and it is very difficult to repair the culture that suffers such harm.

The Church, too, is a society. She is composed of parts; she has order, hierarchy, and laws. Yet for her, too, when the Rule of Law is disrespected, the damage to the body politic is inestimable. This is something we have been experiencing for several decades, but has been accelerating in recent years. Canon Law is much more ancient than the Anglo-American tradition of Common Law, and it is not without its glories, and points of pride. American Law has an abhorrence toward “cruel and unusual punishment”, that is, punishment for crimes meted out in a matter which could be considered sadistic or ‘showy’. Conceived out of a hatred for tyranny, the American Founders wanted to avoid as much as possible any sort of theater in the application of penalties. They knew that the law and courts can be, and often are, occasions for high drama, and low politics. This is something which is virtually unavoidable to human nature. But apart from the public humiliations and excoriations which take place in courtrooms, the American Legal Tradition tries to keep penal drama to a minimum.

Two years after the difficult news of Traditionis Custodes, I find many dear friends and colleagues bracing themselves for an even more severe blow from another anticipated document out of Rome, which will further curtail the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass. Once again, I find myself baffled by the outsized amount of animosity toward what is admittedly a small but vibrant part of the Church at large. It is difficult my own puzzlement at what motivates such animus at its base, especially when communities based upon the TLM are one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak landscape in the contemporary Church. The face of the Church in these places is young, devout and engaged. It is easy for progressives to caricature some of these people for their more extreme manifestations, but the fact remains that they have literally embody in our day the Socratic dictum that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice: they have arguably suffered far more evil from the Church’s structures than they have done harm to them. So many simply want to worship God in peace, with a reverent liturgy, with orthodox preaching according to Catholic faith and morals, and to raise their families in an environment that they feel helps support their vocation in a hostile world, rather than subverts it.

To date, I have always felt the attacks on the TLM and traditional worship in general were cruel. Now I believe they border on the usual and the sadistic. If these rumors are true, and I fear they may be, I believe they seriously call into question our fundamental conviction on salus animarum suprema lex (the salvation of souls is the supreme law of the Church), and whether our hierarchs are more serious on evangelization truly understood, or on settling the scores of yesteryear, that is, the old post-conciliar vendettas of the 1970s.

St. John Henry Newman famously noted that a true development of doctrine is known by how it is organic. It can be observed to take place naturally in line with the inner vital principles of the organism. Truth is perennial, and has a life of its own, because that life is grounded in the eternal life of God, and is commutable with it. Like all true life, it is irrepressible. It will continue to sprout up no matter how hard we try to suppress it. Despite the headwinds of secularism without, and modernism within, the TLM in particular, and interest in theocentric, reverent worship in general, have continued to captivate the interest of pious men and women, and will continue to do so.

I would also like to note a phenomenon which I have previously called the “gerontocracy”, something which is prevalent now in both the Church and the State: the inability of a certain cadre of old guard to let go of the reins of power. We all witnessed this sad spectacle with the pitiable performance of President Biden last week in the Presidential Debate. We especially are witnessing it in the tight control the old guard is exercising over current affairs. Fortunately, this tendency in government is moderated by the fact that elected officials at least can, in theory, start young. In Church world, near all decision-making on a Diocesan, National and International level is an old man’s game. Practically speaking, this still means that this is a process tightly managed by 60s and 70s liberals and their anointed successors. When Benedict XVI was elected, I could never have imagined that we would be in the position that we are in now. It had seemed that the forces of liberalism were certainly in low-ebb, if not an outright rout. Yet they merely waited for the winds to change.

Yet when speaking of vital princples, one which I think is true is that any natural organism has a limited capacity to endure abuse, save the intervening power of supernatural grace, which grants heroic fortitude. Heroic virtue is relatively rare in the world and in individuals, and it is presumptuous to expect it as a matter of course. I want to note something cautiously, but at the same time clearly, because I think that it is a trait which is actually quite common among cults (in the bad sense) and narcissists: it is the practice of gaslighting. This too, is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, with this added element of sadism: blaming the victim for their suffering.

In this case, these (predominately) men have the audacity to paint all traditionalists as schismatics or as anti-Papalists (as if being against the policies of one Pope is to be against the Papacy itself), and when they push these people further and further to the peripheries (read, exit doors) that they claim they love, they then punish them most severely when they actually do see the rumblings of schism. This is similar to what an abusive partner does: do the very thing which causes the effect you decry, and then attempt to make the victim believe they caused the harm you yourself inflicted. We see the same thing in highly dysfunctional presbyterates, when Bishops and their sycophantic allies abuse their Priests, and then act shocked when their Priests leave the Priesthood or act out as malcontents. When you treat people like they are your enemy, do not become surprised if they become your enemy. The goodwill of even the most beneficient and docile people is not inexhaustible.

I have a suggestion which a reader may find possibly disturbing, but I think, at this juncture, must be done. I believe the current Church atmosphere can best be analyzed if we look at it from the perspective of Cultic Studies. Yes, I do mean like infamous religious cults. There is an old cynical joke among sociologists of religion that the only difference between a cult and a religion is time, just like a dialect and a language is an army. I do not mean that we look at the Church as a whole that way, but what we are degenerating into that at the current time in elements of our governance. This returns me to the theme with which I began.

Instead of being a Church with is governed by stable things – Law, Dogma, and Tradition – we are increasingly dispensing with all three, and basing our stability, or lack thereof, on none of these things. In the vacuum, we are doing what usually happens in those conditions. We seek a personality, a human figurehead that can impose order, whether real or imagined. I would argue that this process began early, with the Papacy of St. John Paul II, a man who fortunately had the sanctity, sanity and strength of will to provide, through both personal charisma and the charism of his office, a ‘cultic’ headship of the Church. Almost imperceptibly, as I noted in another essay, the “Zero Day Vulnerability” of Vatican I was hacked, and although it began well, it could always end badly.

A liberal may argue that a traditionalist is cultic, in the sense that we are seeking a return to an imaginary past, or comfort in some sort of nostalgia. And while I share some criticisms regarding the ahistoricity of some forms of traditionalism, my riposte to the liberal argument is this: the traditionalist does not yearn for the past, the traditionalist yearns for the eternal. What they flippantly dismiss as nostalgia is in fact for most a yearning for something deeply transcendental, something beyond time and space. In the words of William Faulkner, the past is not gone; it is not even past. A traditionalist would add that things that constitute True Tradition are not even part of the continuum of past, present, or future: they touch the Eternal Liturgy of God. An educated traditionalist would acknowledge the ‘accidents’ of historical and cultural expression, whether East or West, Latin, Greek, Courtly, Carolingian, etc. These cannot be denied by any informed people. But to accuse traditionalists of mere self-indulgent nostalgia is a form of gaslighting, or cultic abuse. It is time we named it and exposed it as such, so as to rob it of its power.

On the other hand, the appeals of the ‘other side’ often are about the ‘current thing’; not an appeal to tradition as a living, inherited reality, which is typical of an organic being, but rather as an artifact, which is worked on over time. This distinction between organism vs. artifact is typical of the ancient vs. modernistic mentality, and one of the key metaphyiscal and epistemological attitudes distinguishing ancient and modern people. Moreover, so much of the anti-traditionalist camp is replete with arguments on authority, which are almost always the weakest arguments. In this case, they are based on ‘the will’ of the Pope, who is supposed to somehow embody ‘tradition’ on his own. Yet that is not what the Councils, nor the historical Magisterium, say that the Papacy, let alone this Pope, is, or does.

I think we have serious questions to ask ourselves as a Church today, and in this I may permit myself to sound somewhat like a liberal: structurally, we are extremely open to be exploited by narcissistic, cultic leadership. Narcissists and their ilk are a danger in any leadership structure, but when we add the aura and power of religion, the danger is compounded. I am not saying that Pope Francis is a narcissist, but I am saying that even for the most altruistic, self-effacing man, it would be relatively easy to lose one’s sense of accountability and groundedness on the Chair of Peter as it currently stands. In the Middle Ages and before, the Pope had to contend with the martyr’s flame, the Emperor’s soldiers and the angry Roman mob if they were displeasing to them. Perhaps even they could be poisoned by their own Cardinals. Even if formally “no man can judge the Pope”, there were plenty of informal ways one could check his caprice. Paul could still rebuke Peter, and not be called a traitor. Now, is that possible? Today, would a 21st century Peter label Paul a schismatic, and excommunicate him for defying him?

Narcissists have a trait which is found in common with terminally fragile organizations, and that is their fragility. They are unwilling to embrace legitimate criticism in a way that is healthy and that contributes to growth. Thus, they lash out and attack those people and structures which stand out as rebukes to their programmes or ways of thinking, specifically because they wound their pride. But notice the order of attack: first are the accusations of disloyalty, then come the theological justifications. This, too, is typical of patterns of abuse. The abuser first identies weaknesses in their prey, and then retroactively invents their casus belli in order to subvert the internal defenses of their victim. In this way, the victim is exposed to a sort of spiritually and psychologically paralyzing agent, which makes them unable to move in their own defense. It also makes the victim waste precious psychological resources responding to the spurious charges of disloyalty, when in fact what they ought to be doing is clearly and unequivocally defending their right to exist, free of cruelty and abuse.

This leads me to my final point. If the abuse is going to stop, traditionalists are not going to win by more scholarship or more advanced theological arguments. This will not convince the contrary party. What they need to do is to assert boldly their right to exist. They also need to make clear that what is being done to them constitutes a form of cruelty and spiritual abuse. Schism is not a result of their convictions. Schism is an effect of the disrespect and indignity which they suffer because their convictions are not treated seriously. Schism is well known to be a sin against the charity which ought to reign within the Church. I have to ask the men who are persecuting the traditionalists: where is your charity? How does attachment to the Church’s older form of worship on its own constitute a lack of charity, or threaten the Church’s charity? To commit the sin of Schism is to break the Church’s unity, it is true. But unity and uniformity are not the same. The Ecclesial Left may deride the anti-Modernist efforts of St. Pius X, but at the present time, they are guilty of pursuing some of the same sort of ecclesiastical monoculture which they claim they despise. Pursuing further action against the Usus Antiquior at this time is cruel, unusual, unnecessary, and uncharitable. I only hope that more compassionate, broadminded individuals can see this persecution for what it is, before the willing horse is flogged beyond its breaking point.