Episode 3205: A Fraternal Correction: On Tradition and “Traditionalism”

Vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
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Origen and the Gospel of Matthew
Proverbs 22:6 (Douay–Rheims)
"Train up a young man according to his way: even when he is old, he will not depart from it." The protestant texts use “train up a child,” instead of young man but they somewhat miss the point. The original text emphasizes forming a young man according to his way (secundum viam suam), which traditional commentators explain as shaping his habits and morals early, because they will carry into adulthood.
St. Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621)
Bellarmine, in his Catechetical Instructions and moral writings, often returns to this verse when stressing the formation of youth. His commentary can be summarized in three points:
1. Early Formation is Crucial
He emphasizes that just as a tree bends easily when young but hardens as it grows, so too a child must be taught discipline, virtue, and the Faith early. Otherwise, vice becomes deeply rooted and nearly impossible to uproot.
2. “According to his way”
Bellarmine interprets this as not indulging the child’s inclinations, but forming him according to the way of salvation suited to his state in life. For example, if a boy shows aptitude for learning, direct him toward the sciences of faith; if toward practical labor, form him with honesty, diligence, and fear of God.
3. Permanence of Formation
He notes that early formation tends to be lifelong — good or bad. Thus parents and pastors bear tremendous responsibility, since a neglected or indulgent upbringing often leads to ruin, whereas a disciplined and devout upbringing produces lasting fidelity.
But we have a stark contrast in our modern church today. They don’t want parents to train up the young man in the proper formation of the faith but rather strip the training out completely to leave the young man wondering in this world defenseless according to his own whims and human instincts.

Introduction: The Vanishing Devotions
• Devotions like the Holy Rosary, the Sacred Heart, and Christ the King once animated parish life.
• Today, they are either neglected, pushed aside, or outright suppressed by some bishops.
• Recently, a bishop even attempted to ban public Rosaries in his diocese. Why?
• This episode will uncover the deeper reasons: cultural hostility, theological modernism, and the supernatural threat these devotions pose to Satan’s kingdom.
Segment 1: The Power of Devotion
• Devotions are not “optional extras.” They are channels of grace endorsed by saints and popes.
• The Rosary: called by St. Pius V “the weapon against heresy” and by Our Lady at Fatima “the means to peace.”
• Christ the King: Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925) taught that society will crumble unless nations publicly recognize Christ’s Kingship.
• These devotions remind us of the supernatural order and the fact that the Church’s mission is salvation, not merely social work.
Segment 2: Why the World Hates Them
• The secular world despises anything that proclaims exclusive truth.
• Marian devotion declares Christ came through one woman not through interfaith consensus.
• Christ the King proclaims that nations must serve Christ, not relativism or liberal democracy.
• Therefore, public Rosaries, enthronements, and consecrations stand as rebukes to modern man’s pride and rebellion.
Segment 3: Why Certain Bishops Suppress Devotions
• Many clergy were trained to see devotions as “pre-Vatican II excesses.”
• They fear:
o Division (devotional groups often unite traditional Catholics).
o Loss of control (the faithful can gather without diocesan committees).
o Embarrassment before the world (“too medieval,” “too triumphalistic”).
• Suppression of the Rosary is not about “unity” it is about silencing Tradition.
Segment 4: Spiritual Warfare Against Devotions
• The Devil hates the Rosary because it chains him. St. Padre Pio: “The Rosary is the weapon for these times.”
• The Devil hates Christ the King because it dethrones him as the “prince of this world.”
• Attacks on devotions are therefore not merely human politics they are demonic strategies.
Segment 5: Perseverance of the Faithful
• Despite bans, ridicule, or indifference, devotions flourish wherever the faithful persevere.
• St. Louis de Montfort: “The more the devil tries to destroy the Rosary, the more it will flourish.”
• Families must pray the Rosary daily, enthrone the Sacred Heart, and proclaim Christ the King in their homes.
• The restoration of the Church will come not from committees but from kneeling Catholics clutching their beads.
Conclusion: The Call to Arms
• We are in a battle for the soul of the Church.
• Devotions are not outdated they are our lifeline.
• If priests and bishops resist, we obey God first.
• Like St. Athanasius in the Arian crisis, the faithful must cling to Tradition until God restores His Church.
But even more disturbing is that our Bishop our insistent that the young men have nothing of tradition and even more so attack those very things the church has for centuries provided the young men like St John Vianey, St John Bosco and St Padre Pio needed in order to become the great saints and teachers of the Church. They want it gone and they will take a wrecking ball to it any time they have the chance. I spoke to you about a bishop who insists his diocese stop saying the rosary. The greatest weapon against satan in our times. In other words leaving the youngman defenseless. But I want to read you an article that Archbishop Cardinal Cupich wrote in the Chicago Catholic.
Tradition or Traditionalism? A Catholic Response
Today we confront a debate that strikes at the heart of Catholic life: the meaning of Tradition. Cardinal Blase Cupich recently repeated the well-known saying of Jaroslav Pelikan: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”
Tradition vs. traditionalism
But clever slogans are not theology. As one recent response reminded us, Tradition is not simply a sociological memory it is the divine transmission of truth, entrusted once for all to the Apostles and faithfully handed down
A Fraternal Correction On Tradi…
When this transmission is disparaged as “going backward,” the faithful have a duty to respond.
Segment 1: What Is Tradition?
• Cupich’s claim: Tradition must “develop” or the Church risks going backward
Tradition vs. traditionalism
• Catholic teaching: Vatican II’s Dei Verbum teaches: “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God”
A Fraternal Correction On Tradi…
• Tradition is not man-made memory but the channel of divine revelation.
• St. Paul exhorts: “Stand fast, and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle” (2 Thess 2:14).
Segment 2: St. Vincent of Lérins on True Development
• Both Cupich and his critics cite St. Vincent.
• St. Vincent’s warning: development must be like a body’s growth the same essence, not mutation
Tradition vs. traditionalism
• As the response notes: “Development means each thing is enlarged in itself; alteration means one thing is changed into another.”
A Fraternal Correction On Tradi…
• Replacing the Roman Rite with a manufactured liturgy is mutation, not growth.
Segment 3: Newman and Continuity
• Cupich appeals to Newman as a champion of development
Tradition vs. traditionalism
• Yet Newman himself gave “notes” of authentic development: preservation of type, continuity of principle.
• Pope Benedict XVI echoed this: “What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too.”
A Fraternal Correction On Tradi…
• True Newman would never have blessed rupture in worship.
Segment 4: False History and the “Spectacle” Claim
• Cupich argues the Carolingian and Baroque periods corrupted the liturgy, turning it into spectacle
Tradition vs. traditionalism
• But Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei rejected antiquarianism: the more recent rites also deserve reverence
A Fraternal Correction On Tradi…
• Solemn High Mass is not theater — it sanctified saints like Philip Neri, Thérèse, and Padre Pio. To dismiss their worship as “spectacle” is a grave distortion.
Segment 5: Active Participation
• Cupich says Vatican II restored active participation
Tradition vs. traditionalism
• But Pius X, who coined the phrase, defined it primarily as interior — uniting the faithful with Christ the High Priest
A Fraternal Correction On Tradi…
• Silence, kneeling, interior prayer: these are deep participation. External activism is not the essence.
Segment 6: The Real Threat — Modernism
• The response reminds us: the true enemy is not “traditionalism” but Modernism, condemned by Pius X as “the synthesis of all heresies”
A Fraternal Correction On Tradi…
• Modernism cloaks itself in terms like “living tradition” and “new contexts,” but in reality it dissolves dogma into opinion.
• The fruits — collapse in vocations, Mass attendance, belief in the Real Presence — confirm the diagnosis
I can show you in detail how Cardinal Cupich has misappropriated and even deviously twisted the authorities he cites—Pelikan, St. Vincent of Lérins, Newman, and Sacrosanctum Concilium—to push an anti-traditionalist narrative that does not withstand scrutiny when read in full Catholic context. Let’s take them one by one:
1. Jaroslav Pelikan’s Aphorism
Cupich’s Use:
He begins with Pelikan’s quip: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Cupich uses this as the controlling framework for his essay: “tradition” is flexible and forward-looking, while “traditionalism” is backward and sterile.
The Problem:
Pelikan was not a Catholic theologian but a Lutheran convert to Orthodoxy, writing from an academic, not magisterial, lens. His aphorism is sociological, not theological. Sacred Tradition in Catholic teaching is not merely “living memory” but the divinely protected transmission of revelation.
The Devious Twist:
By substituting Pelikan’s secular quote for the Church’s definition of Tradition, Cupich primes his readers to see fidelity as “dead” and novelty as “living.” This rhetorical sleight-of-hand undermines what Vatican II itself affirmed: “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God” (DV 9).
2. St. Vincent of Lérins
Cupich’s Use:
He quotes St. Vincent’s metaphor of human growth: the child becomes a man, developing organically but remaining the same in essence. Cupich applies this to argue that Vatican II’s liturgical revolution is simply a natural “maturation” of the Church.
The Problem:
Cupich stops short of St. Vincent’s most important line:
“But it must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each thing is enlarged in itself; alteration means that one thing is changed into another.” (Commonitorium, ch. 23).
The Devious Twist:
By omitting this crucial safeguard, Cupich presents St. Vincent as if he endorsed change into something else—which St. Vincent explicitly condemned. Cupich weaponizes Vincent to excuse rupture, when Vincent was the great defender against novelty and corruption.
3. Blessed John Henry Newman
Cupich’s Use:
He invokes Newman’s Essay on Development to suggest that Vatican II reforms were simply legitimate developments in continuity with Catholic doctrine.
The Problem:
Newman carefully distinguished development from corruption. His “notes” of true development included: preservation of type, continuity of principles, and logical sequence. A reform that discards or contradicts what came before is corruption, not growth.
The Devious Twist:
Cupich takes Newman’s name, strips away his careful criteria, and implies that Newman would have applauded the post-Conciliar liturgical rupture. Yet Newman himself worshipped daily in the traditional Roman Rite and never proposed its abandonment. By misusing Newman, Cupich cloaks discontinuity with a veneer of “development.”
4. Sacrosanctum Concilium and “Active Participation”
Cupich’s Use:
He claims the liturgical reform was an exercise in “responsible development,” restoring the “original emphasis on active participation” and correcting supposed corruptions from Carolingian and Baroque eras.
The Problem:
Sacrosanctum Concilium never mandated the Novus Ordo as it was enacted. It called for “noble simplicity” and “greater participation,” but within the framework of the existing rite. Pius X, who introduced the phrase “active participation,” meant primarily interior participation—uniting oneself with the mysteries, not busily multiplying lay ministries.
The Devious Twist:
Cupich misrepresents both history and the Council’s text. He paints centuries of organic enrichment as “imperial spectacle” while elevating 1970s committee-driven rupture as “authentic restoration.” This inversion of reality is a hallmark of Modernist strategy: vilify the past to justify novelty.
5. Pope Francis’s Quotation
Cupich’s Use:
He repeats Pope Francis’s line that those who “look backward” are not traditional, but “going backward.”
The Problem:
Tradition by definition looks backward—“tradere” means “to hand down.” To reject the past as inherently suspect is to saw off the very branch of apostolic succession and continuity upon which the Church rests.
The Devious Twist:
By framing fidelity as regression, Cupich implies that saints who clung to the immemorial liturgy—Padre Pio, St. Thérèse, St. Alphonsus, and countless others—were in some sense “going backward.” This is not only historically false but spiritually insulting.
The Pattern of Misappropriation
1. Pelikan: External academic quote replaces Catholic teaching.
2. Vincent: Key warning against alteration omitted.
3. Newman: Development stripped of criteria, used to justify rupture.
4. Vatican II: Documents twisted beyond their text to excuse innovations never mandated.
5. Francis: Soundbites weaponized to paint fidelity as regression.
This is not mere oversight it is a systematic skewing of sources to prop up a predetermined thesis: that Tradition must evolve into something different or risk “death.”
But in reality, as Pius XII warned, such “antiquarianism” and innovation risk destroying what the Holy Spirit Himself cultivated in the Church across centuries.
Conclusion
True Tradition is living — but not because it changes essence. It lives because it hands on, unchanged, what Christ gave the Apostles.
As St. John of the Cross said: “What was true for our forefathers is true also for us.”
To guard, preserve, and transmit that Tradition whole and intact is the highest service the Church’s shepherds can render to Christ and His flock.

Epistle: Galatians 3:16–22
"To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed. He saith not: And to his seeds, as of many; but as of one: And to thy seed, which is Christ... For if there had been a law given which could give life, verily justice should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise, by the faith of Jesus Christ, might be given to them that believe."
Reflection on the Epistle
St. Paul teaches us that salvation comes not by the works of the law, but by the promise fulfilled in Christ. The Mosaic law had its place it revealed sin and prepared for the Redeemer—but it could not give life. Only Christ, the true Seed of Abraham, could bring justification and eternal salvation.
From a traditional Catholic perspective, this Epistle reminds us that we must guard against both legalism and presumption. Legalism clings to externals without interior conversion; presumption believes salvation is automatic without works of faith. True Catholic life is lived in grace, uniting faith with charity, always rooted in the Person of Christ.
Abraham’s faith, held up as the model, was a living faitha faith of obedience, trust, and sacrifice. In the same way, our faith must not be abstract but concrete, lived in fidelity to the Church, in obedience to Tradition, and in hope that Christ will fulfill all His promises.
Gospel – Luke 17:11–19
"And it came to pass, as he was going to Jerusalem, he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain town, there met him ten men that were lepers... And when he saw them, he said: Go, shew yourselves to the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were made clean. And one of them, when he saw that he was made clean, went back, with a loud voice glorifying God... And Jesus answering, said: Were not ten made clean? And where are the nine? There is no one found to return and give glory to God, but this stranger. And he said to him: Arise, go thy way; for thy faith hath made thee whole."
Reflection on the Gospel
Ten lepers received healing, but only one returned to give thanks. The other nine received a temporal blessing but missed the greater grace of salvation through gratitude.
This Gospel strikes at the heart of modern Catholic life. How many receive God’s blessings the sacraments, health, prosperity, opportunities but fail to return thanks? Ingratitude is a mark of spiritual decay; gratitude is a mark of sanctity.
From a traditional Catholic perspective, this Gospel also foreshadows the Church’s mission beyond Israel. The one who returned was a Samaritan, a foreigner, yet he alone gave thanks. Christ shows that true worship is not bound by blood or nationality but by faith and thanksgiving.
We must ask ourselves: are we among the nine, who take God’s gifts and move on, or are we the one, who returns to fall at the feet of Christ in gratitude? Gratitude leads to deeper faith and opens the soul to sanctifying grace.
Feast Day: September 7th
Traditionally, this day often commemorates the Vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, preparing for her feast on September 8th. The Church invites us to look to Our Lady as the perfect model of both faith and gratitude. Unlike the nine lepers, she never failed to glorify God. Her Magnificat "My soul doth magnify the Lord" is the perpetual hymn of gratitude and faith.

Application for Today
• Live faith actively: Like Abraham, trust in God’s promises and live in obedience, not mere externals.
• Cultivate gratitude: Make daily thanksgiving a habit—after Holy Communion, after blessings, after trials overcome.
• Be the one, not the nine: Return always to Christ in prayer, adoration, and service, never taking His gifts for granted.
• Look to Mary: Prepare with her for tomorrow’s feast; imitate her Magnificat by making gratitude the song of your soul.
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Conclusionary Prayer
O Lord, who hast fulfilled Thy promises in Christ, grant us the grace to live by faith and not by presumption. Save us from the ingratitude of the nine lepers, and make us like the one who returned, giving Thee glory in all things. Through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, prepare our hearts to receive every gift with gratitude and to live always in fidelity to Thy covenant of grace.
Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, intercede for us.
St. Abraham, father of faith, pray for us.