(www.RemnantNewspaper.com)  A plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) began meeting Tuesday, January 24^th.  The purpose is, in part, to deliberate over the Society of St. Pius X’s response regarding the Vatican’s proposed doctrinal preamble. Acceptance of the preamble was put forward by the Vatican as a precondition to any canonical regularization of the Society. Members of the CDF who will help decide the Society’s fate include: Cardinal William Levada, “Ecumenical Experts” Cardinals Kurt Koch and Walter Kasper, Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (of balloon Mass fame), along with Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Müller. Looking at this assembly, it seems the Society has as much a chance of being offered “full communion” as the Tea Party being offered an invitation to join the Democratic Party.

On January 27, Pope Benedict XVI addressed this plenary session discussing Tradition, ecumenism, and Vatican II.  Although the address said some good things (including condemnations of irenicism and indifferentism), a few statements are enough to give Traditionalists some pause. First, the Pope states, “We can see today not few good fruits born of the ecumenical dialogues..." The obvious Traditional response to this statement is to ask: “Such as?”  The Pope fails to mention any specifically in his address. Since the only legitimate fruit of any ecumenical discussion is the conversion of non-Catholics to Catholicism, where is the evidence that this been brought about through ecumenism?

One could argue that the recent entry into the Church of a large number of Anglicans proves the point. But did these Anglicans convert because of ecumenism or in spite of it? Endless dialogue with more liberal Anglicans under Walter Kasper and the English bishops seems to have gotten nowhere.  In fact the Vatican made great pains to reject the accusation that it was “fishing in the Anglican pond.” The Vatican merely said that it could not deny entry into the Church from those who request it. And why were these particular Anglicans requesting entry into the Barque of Peter?  These were traditional Anglicans increasingly disaffected by their denomination’s worsening liberal stands on key theological issues. This disaffection reached its zenith when the Anglican Synod of July 12, 2010 endorsed the ordination of women as bishops.

The truth is that these traditional Anglicans were already, in many ways, more Catholic than their liberal “Catholic” counterparts. While the Pope is owed much credit for generously accepting these Anglicans into the fold and going out of his way to accommodate them, their conversion can hardly be claimed as a victory of the ecumenical movement. Ironically, their leaving Anglicanism was motivated precisely by their realization that dialogue with the fanatical leftist contingent in their denomination was futile and that they needed the authority of Peter to inoculate them from the perils of democratically approved heresy.

Later in the address, the Pope states, "It is fundamental here, among other things, to distinguish between Tradition, with a capital letter, and traditions." What the Pope is saying, in effect, is that the disciplinary laws of the Church are subject to change, but the Church’s doctrine is not.  Unfortunately, this same big “T”/ little “t” distinction, once used by Neo-Catholic apologists towards Protestants, is now used by the same lot against Traditionalists. Neo-Catholics now use the same distinction to justify curtly dismissing every Traditional disciplinary practice for the last two thousand years in favor of disciplinary novelties implemented in the last fifty years. According to their argument, the Tridentine Mass, breviary, rites and ceremonies are but changeable “little t” traditions.  Similarly, this line of thinking often relegates such Papal Encyclicals as Quanta Cura (teaching against religious liberty), Mortalium Animos (teaching against ecumenism), and Pastor Aeternus (teaching against collegiality) as "little t" traditions as well, as they were changeable “policies” which were good for their time, but are now to be disregarded as outdated and replaced with Vatican II “policies” that apply to “our time.”

In the next sentences of the address, the Pope gives the example of the incoming Anglicans who wished to, “preserv[e] their own spiritual traditions, liturgical and pastoral, that are consistent with the Catholic Faith.” Thus, similarly, one would assume that the Society should be able to keep their “little t” spiritual, liturgical, and pastoral traditions “consistent with the Catholic Faith.” So what’s the problem? Shouldn’t the Society be granted “full communion” on this basis? Not so fast.

The problem is that Traditionalists do not necessarily see the Catholic spiritual, liturgical, and pastoral traditions of the Church for the last two thousand years as changeable, optional, “little t” traditions.  Furthermore, to accept this notion is to put these practices on the same level as the Novus Ordo Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, Assisi’s I-III,  and the “spiritual, liturgical, and pastoral traditions” of such groups as the Neo-Catechumenal Way and the Charismatic movement. To accept this view seems to violate the principle of non-contradiction. Can one honestly look at the liturgy of the Neo-Catechumenal Way and that of St. Pius V and say that both liturgies represent identical theologies? Where is the Catholic unity in these two rites other than the fact that they are both “approved” by Rome?

Furthermore, novel notions of religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality also must be accepted at least as "little t" traditions of our time, which must have equal if not greater weight than those other, old-fashioned notions of these concepts which came before. If the Catholic teaching on these issues can be changed, it is then an admission that the original pronouncements of these teachings were changeable and thus remain in the realm of “little t” tradition.

Thus, the Church is reduced to a "least common denominator" Catholicism. This notion leads to the Vatican distinguishing what "core elements" Tradition and novelty have in common, agreeing on these, and then letting all sides—Traditional, Liberal, and everything in between—go off in their own directions regarding everything from the Mass to ecumenism. One could then imagine the Mystical Body of Christ consisting of a spine of defined dogma with limbs that war with each other on almost every other matter. This is hardly the unity envisioned by Our Lord.

Unfortunately, the Vatican seems to be using the exact same ecumenical approach towards the Society as it uses towards Protestantism and non-Christian religions. As we can see from the Assisi debacles and the Catholic-Lutheran joint declaration on salvation, this "unity in diversity" approach always ends in mass confusion, relativism, and indifferentism, despite Vatican attempts at bureaucratic hair-splitting to keep the façade of orthodoxy.

In the final analysis, being “permitted” to be fully Catholic while in full communion with the Church seems to come at the price of admitting that the other novel ways of “being Catholic” invented over the last fifty years are just as legitimate and efficacious as Tradition.  Thus the Mass of Pius V is merely a “little t” tradition, on par with the Charismatic Mass, Folk Mass, and Rock Mass. Enter relativism. For what the Vatican bureaucrats fail to understand is that only one set of these “little t” traditions fully embodies, encourages, and spreads the true Catholic Faith.  Once the official structures of the Church can bring themselves to admit the path our Catholic ancestors took under guidance of the Holy Ghost over two thousand years is superior to the man-made innovations of the modern era, the true restoration of the Church can begin.