COTT HAHN recently made a distinction between “glad trads” and “rad trads.” Perhaps someday I will have an opportunity to comment on that, although I’m not sure anyone cares how I feel. For the moment I can only say—from personal experience—that many of the Rad Trads have faded away, while the Glad Trads have grown exponentially since my family began attending the Traditional Latin Mass in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, Rad Trad authors still exist on the internet, and some of them are extremely ferocious and dangerous. 1 They harm the Catholic Church very much.
When Father Isaac Jogues became a willing captive of the Iroquois, he underwent suffering and humiliation too terrible for words. Some of the experiences he endured were rather strange. For instance, he was kept in a tiny room—without clean drinking water—in the scorching summer heat. For months he sat there, in extreme pain, reading the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis over and over again. This ordeal was somewhat strange; he was alone, dressed in lay clothing, missing several fingers, probably very bored. On a much smaller scale, we in 2021 are called to do something strange. We must avoid reading the ravings of Rad Trads. We must never respond to them or acknowledge them, because they crave attention and “clicks.”
An Example: An ex-parishioner has spent the last few years spreading nasty rumors about my parish and our FSSP priests. He attacks us because we have Mass in a tent. (We have thousands of parishioners and can’t squeeze in our tiny little church—that’s why we’re trying to raise money to build a new church and we’ve already raised 3 million dollars.)
This malicious numbskull claims that our Masses are “invalid” because they happen underneath a tent. He calls our Masses “tent-revivals.” But check out this manuscript from the 14th century:
It looks like our church! Even though we have six Masses each Sunday, we just can’t fit all the people who want to attend.
Trusting In God: We will get a church in God’s good time. It’s not for us to question why God allows certain things to happen. Over the last year, our government has printed trillions of dollars—and I know people who have gotten rich off “Covid relief” in a very dishonest way. But Our Lord has asked: For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?
NOTES FROM THIS ARTICLE:
1 I know several who are cowardly hypocrites who live in an alternate reality…but that’s another story for another day!
