Tradition Without Traditionalism

Religious conservatives need to draw on the past without living in it

Pope Francis is in the hospital with pneumonia, and it’s not clear if he will survive.

Francis is the bête noire of American trad Catholics. I am not Catholic myself and I certainly have my differences with Francis on a range of topics. But Francis seems to be theologically orthodox. And he also has some trenchant critiques of conservative religion that both Catholic and non-Catholic traditionalists would do well to consider.

In a world that seems to have gone mad, or at least very poorly from the perspective of the contemporary American Christian, it can be tempting to retreat into the past. Indeed, we see many people looking backward to the past in search of solid ground to stand on in an era that’s been described as “liquid modernity.”

This manifests religiously itself in many ways, including the growth of interest in the Latin Mass in the Catholic Church, the turn to Eastern Orthodoxy, or the draw of more liturgical traditions like Anglicanism among Protestants.

I personally am part of this. Raised low church Pentecostal, I have been drawn to more traditional Presbyterianism, preferring old churches, classic hymns, formal liturgies, etc.

We see this also in the non-religious world, with the homesteading movement or the “trad wife” phenomenon. It’s self-consciously retro and escapist.

Rightly understood, this impulse is correct. This is a time to consider our ways and reflect on where we may have strayed from the path. Anchoring in historic faith and practices is one way we can seek to correct where we might have gone astray. We can see that there are good things that have been lost with social changes, and seek to recover them.

But this can be taken too far.

Pope Francis criticized conservative American Catholics for having “a very strong reactionary attitude.” He described them as “backward looking.” While his context was their unhappiness with his doctrinal innovations, there is a kernel of truth in his warning.

We cannot return to the Christianity of a previous era. Pre-Vatican II Catholicism cannot be restored. The mainline Protestantism of the 1950s is not coming back.

Whatever the problems with modernity, the industrial age, technology, or liberalism – and there are many – we cannot escape them by returning to a previous age. Attempting to do so is what the Internet calls “LARPing” or live action role playing.

The persistence and pervasiveness of the monastic impulse tells us that there’s something in the human condition that attracts people to this kind of life. But it never has been and never can be the mainstream option. We are not going to all start raising our own food and churning our own butter. We are not going to recreate a medieval polity.

The traditionalist impulse goes astray when it becomes too alienated from the modern world and the culture in which God placed us. Such an approach can give incisive critiques of the modern world, but it can’t produce a viable alternative.

Take “post-liberalism.” A post-liberalism that positions itself as the next stage in the development of the American tradition is viable. After all, what we call liberalism today is post-liberal when compared with the liberalism of yesteryear, something Paul Gottfried details in his After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State.

By contrast, a post-liberalism that rejects the American political and cultural tradition in favor of some outré retro vision is not viable. Catholic integralism clearly qualifies here. As does the idea of monarchy pushed by people like Curtis Yarvin. (Although Yarvin is not actually a monarchist as traditionally understood. He rebranded his techno-corporatist dystopia as monarchy because no one gets in trouble for being a monarchist).

It’s similar for technology. There’s no neo-Luddite solution to the problems posed by modern technology. Nor is homesteading a general solution to problems of a rootless society and declining social capital.

It came out this week that one of the big evangelical tradwife influencers was fake persona. This should surprise no one. No genuinely traditionalist woman is working to become a social media influencer.

Substantive gender complementarity is real and the sex role division of labor is good (cf: Adam Smith), but it’s not the 1950s anymore. Nor would any of us actually want to live in that environment.

One of the great appeals of Protestantism is that it is the modern version of Christianity par excellence. It arguably created the modern world as we know it. And it has the resources to continually press forward, adapt, and regenerate.

After Protestant businessmen built industrial America, it was the largely Protestant Progressive movement and New Deal that tamed industrial modernity. Yarvin loves to point out that the Protestant churches were advocates and developers of what became the postwar liberal rules based international order and institutions. While this regime is showing its age today, that was clearly a good thing that delivered enormous benefits to humanity.

If those people were around today, they wouldn’t be trying to simply maintain what was built 75 years ago or roll back the clock. They would be seeking to renew and reinvent our institutions for the challenges of a new era. That should be our approach to America, technology, and the church. Not a return to the past, but creating the next stage of organic development that both creates the future and responds to the challenges of today.

The Roman Catholic church also has something of a progressive tradition, such as with its development of doctrine. Catholic Social Teaching was a response to the challenges of industrialization. Vatican II represented a major modernization of the church.

My sense is that the trad Catholic movement is basically about rejecting this progressive orientation in favor of a Catholicism rooted in a historic form deemed to be a point of perfection. Perhaps rejecting Vatican II will “work” in the sense of preserving a small, intact community like the Anabaptists, but its influence will be niche. (The draw of Eastern Orthodoxy among converts also seems to draw on this idea of escaping the problems of the present by returning to the past).

One thing I appreciate is how R. R. Reno and First Things have avoided falling into this trap. Reno is fine with the Latin mass, but he’s also been explicit that the Novus Ordo mass can be wonderful as well. It respect the past without trying to go back and live in it.

Francis at his best recognized that the reactionary impulse is a failure. One can disagree with the way he tried to modernize the church while recognizing that modernization is an imperative. After all, traditional religion crumbled in the face of modernity, as in Quebec (whose Catholic collapse began prior to Vatican II). If it didn’t work then, why would we think it will work now in an even more hyper-modern world?

There is no escape from the world in which we live. We can recognize its problems. We can seek to regain some of the good things that were lost with change. But there’s no retreat into the past. The past is dead and gone. We can only go forward, something I previously dedicated a deep read newsletter to.

Cover image: Pope Francis from the European Union.