Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky/With hideous ruin and combustion. Milton
We've just passed the third anniversary of the calamitous events of November 2009. Like bold Icarus, Traddie clergy flew too close to the heat of the conflict by defending the indefensible. And like that mythic heedless fool, they fell to their ruin.
Traddie-ism is dying, for all practical purposes. Only more decay awaits in the future. There are not enough people willing to give the money needed to sustain the wild spending. The giving trend undoubtedly points to regular weekly collections' dipping below subsistence level. The younger generation will not support chapels at the budget-busting levels their poor parents did. The impending collapse is a solemn warning against allowing clergy access to assets without wise, lay oversight.
Make no mistake, the older clergy must be looking for a way out. They know how to read the red-ink written on the flaking dry-wall. Most must realize they can't ever recover -- there's not enough time -- and each angry day brings with it new losses as people flee disgusted with the whole Traddie misadventure: to remain much longer will tax the older clergy too harshly as resources disappear and looming financial horrors descend.
Now, then, as we approach year's end, it's a good time for the Traddie laity and young clergy to take stock and face a terrifying fact: there is no hope in "organized" traditional Catholicism. The only answer (and it's a temporary one) lies in lay-controlled individual chapels with no affiliation or loyalty or obligation to another organization under the control of one man. These completely independent chapels will not be permanent; they can last perhaps another ten years at best, by which time the expansion of the SSPX, the FSSP, and other such highly qualified institutions will have rendered the few remaining Traddie chapels both intolerable and redundant. By then, Vatican II will have suffered the judgment of history and scholarship. It will stand condemned as alien to Catholic tradition, and the Restoration will be well underway.
This means that there will only be positions for the clergy now in their very late forties or mid-to-late fifties, who had an authentic seminary formation and perhaps have a retirement fund or an inheritance to fall back on when their chapels empty out. The younger clergy, however, won't be so lucky. As the laity see more and more of the new breed of well-trained clergy, they will naturally compare them to the Traddies, and the Traddies will be found painfully wanting.
With no education or job training, today's young Traddie clergy will be virtually unemployable at an age when it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to learn a new trade. They won't be wanted by the SSPX , FSSP, or other societies, not even as lay brothers, and there won't be enough positions among the few Traddie hold-out chapels to support them. The old priests will make sure that no one encroaches on their shrinking turf.
To those disadvantaged young clergy, we offer the words of Cicero: Quod scis nihil prodest, quod nescis multum obest, which we'll of necessity translate for them: What you know is worthless, and what you do not know does much injury. You may be young enough if you leave right now to get some vocational training that can give you a living wage and a modest future. There are many programs available for individuals who are at risk of becoming burdens to the community. Even you can see the ruins around you, so you'd better act now and find a new career before it's too late.
And, BTW, to all the lay folk out there: Remember this holiday season to...
KEEP 'EM POOR!
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