Unite the Clans and other random thoughts on a Thursday afternoon
You may have read that Illinois is going start teaching children in public school that same sex fornication is a good thing and were relieved that you don't live there. Perhaps you shook your head and although you do live in Illinois you were comforted by the fact that your kid goes to private school or is home schooled. That may not be enough to save your children from potential tragedy. What are you going to do when your sister and her family come to visit next Christmas and her son who can barely read at his grade level but got high marks on how use a condom shows your 8 year old what he's been learning all year? How will you react when your 6 year old tells you about anal lubricants because the neighbor kid who moved from Illinois told him and offered to show him all about them? Your daughter may be going to dance camp in the waning days of Summer and might make the acquaintance of another girl whose been taught stuff you never even heard about until you were an adult. The curriculum of Illinois public schools may strike you as distasteful today but may break your heart tomorrow. It's a small world after all.
Michael Matt, Fr. Z. and Taylor Marshall all say ,"Unite the clans!" That means all the groups who love the traditional Mass should ignore the at times, deep differences and come together. Their argument is that it is relatively little stuff that divides and that it is nothing compared to the one thing that we all love. That's lovely but in a practical sense how is this uniting to come about? The diocesan Trads don't want to rock the boat. The Fraternity and Institute of Christ the King are none too friendly to the SSPX; the SSPX people have been insulted by everyone for so long that I think they're shell shocked and some lay people are pretty frank about just wanting to be left in peace and thesedevacantists think all the rest of us are a bunch of fools. Finally there's the Resistance clan who trust no-one outside of their chapels and the Home Aloners who don't trust anyone-- period-- and have such bad PTSD that they'll spook with the first raised eyebrow. Who is our Wallace or our Bruce? It can't be Cardinal Burke. There are those who love him but I've seen pretty harsh dismissal of him as being a "banquet bishop" and too timid. It can't be Vigano. He's in hiding and looking forward to leaving this world in peace now that he's blown the whistle. Bishop Schneider and Cardinal Muller have also been scorned as being too timid to trust in and they are not well known by many traditional Catholics. Who is there in the entire Trad world whom the majority of the clans are willing to follow? You don't have to love the man who but who is there that the majority of us even respect?