Traditional Used to be Modern, Right?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 พ.ค. 2021
- Support the channel by joining The Reinforcements: brianholdsworth.ca
Music written and generously provided by Paul Jernberg. Find out more about his work as a composer here: pauljernberg.com
Whenever someone makes a case for the restoration of elements of Catholic culture which became scarce in the 20th and 21st century, like Gothic architecture, Latin, or Gregorian Chant, you will hear people say a couple things in reply.
The first is that Jesus and the disciples, in the last supper, did not celebrate in Latin, they didn’t have fancy vestments, and they didn’t sing Gregorian chant.
They develop that argument further by pointing out that Gothic Architecture and Gregorian Chant were once new and modern too and the Church was happy to embrace them then so we should be just as willing to embrace new and novel ideas and cultural expressions in the name of progress today.
The first thing that stands out about this sequence of argumentation is how it refutes itself. Which is it? Should we be looking back to Jesus and the disciples and refusing to do anything that adds to that ceremony out of some extreme primitivism?
Or should we embrace progressivism and look to every new and novel idea to enhance our worship and theology? Because it can’t be both. Those two proposals are as diametrically opposed to each other as it gets.
But setting that glaring contradiction aside, accusing orthodox or even Traditional Catholics of being opposed to all things new because they are new and this is why we recoil from modernism and modern culture, is a gross strawman argument.
Tradition is about preserving doctrines and culture which have been shown to be good and worthy or conservation. Contemporary cultural or theological elements that seem to find their way into the Church today aren’t opposed by traditional Catholics because they are new - it’s because they contradict the faith.
Christopher Dawson, who was a writer of incredible depth but is somehow not well known among Catholics today, argued that culture is embodied religion. The way I’ve said it is that culture is the incarnation of beliefs.
Since every historical culture found its embodiment in religion, you can’t separate the religious question from all of this. What this means is that a culture will bloom outwards from a religious creed - or a lack of one. The analogy I’ve used in the past is like words are the embodiment of our thoughts. Our thoughts precede that materialization.
OK, so with that context in mind, lets revisit some of these competing cultural persuasions which feature in the liturgy wars of contemporary Catholicism.
The cultural elements that Traditional Catholics are so attached to are such because they blossomed out of a uniquely Catholic Culture. This was a culture that was inspired by the doctrines of Christianity and organized around those beliefs.
Cultural elements like Gregorian Chant and Gothic architecture were organically and naturally drawn from the bosom of the faith. The contemporary and pop cultural accessories that we try to shoehorn into the Church today come from the bosom of somewhere else, and if we have to use body parts for this analogy, I’d rather swap out bosom for something else.
Pop culture, modern music, modern architecture, these are the embodiment of the modern religion or rather the lack of true religion in the modern world.
They find their origin in a range of philosophies that aren’t just incompatible with Catholic Christianity, they are violently opposed to it. Philosophies like secularism, positivism, communism, nihilism, and modernism are all fundamentally opposed to the Church and it is they that inspire all the degrading fashions of today.
That opposition is explicit and unambiguous from the moment you start reading any of those currents of thought. Traditional Catholics aren’t opposed to everything contemporary, just that particular kind of contemporary that flourishes in the soup of modern philosophies that are contemptuous of Catholicism.
I’ve said in the past that trying to adopt another cultural persuasion while retaining your own creed is like trying to use someone else’s words to express your own beliefs but that’s not actually a strong enough statement. It’s more like trying to express your thoughts with the words of someone who earnestly hates you.
Just like you can’t separate an organ from one body and stick it an incompatible one and expect it to thrive. Not only will it not thrive, it will die. And anyone with an honest appreciation of what’s going on in the Catholic Church and Christianity throughout Western culture, has to admit, that’s what is happening.
We cannot discard our culture and the things that we uniquely produced in an era when the faith was wholly embraced by a people and expect to survive.
In the words of our Lord, “A house divided cannot stand!”
![[FULL EP.14] เซียนหรั่ง สอน มาร์ชจุ จับปูนา ฮากระจาย | เฮ็ดอย่างเซียนหรั่ง | One Playground](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/M8mPjd_T2lo/mqdefault.jpg)
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, it is the preservation of fire"
To whom is this quote attributed? It's absolute gold.
@@carynschmidt5061 It looks like Gustav Mahler from a 5 second Google search. I was about to second your comment but I figured it was probably online. Hopefully that helps :)
@@andrew-elkins Thank you , Andrew .
Until the house burns down completely
Steve Skojec should keep this in mind.
we don't hate Modern art and architecture because it's modern, we hate it because it's ugly
So you *hate* some art due to that you don't comprehend it or don't appreciate it?
@@lumbratile4174 That's right. I recognize but don't understand or appreciate ugliness.
😅😅😅😅 i was not expecting that ending but i definitely understand it 😅
@@GUAMANIANable yeah I mean HATE is a strong word for Aesthetics lol
@@lumbratile4174
I look at it and I find it ugly and sometimes even meaningless, simple as that
You said "a house divided against itself cannot stand", and you are right, but it might also be appropriate to quote another of our Lord's sayings: "No man can serve two masters."
I like Hip-Hop music, I make a living out of it, but I don't like it in the liturgy. I wish we had traditional mass in my country 😕
Right. I think many people miss the fact that music is functional (art too) and not simply expressive. The ancient Greeks had one of the best-developed philosophies on this.
I sympathize with you about traditional liturgy. My expansive archdiocese has one Latin Mass parish. That's it. Out of 167 parishes, only one is traditional. It would be a simple matter to offer one or two extraordinary form Masses at a parish and have the rest be in the ordinary form. Why this isn't more widespread is beyond me. The best i can do is a NO parish with traditional elements like the chanted Latin ordinary, traditional Catholic hymns (none of that folky nonsense i grew up with), and communion on the tongue, kneeling, as an option.
@@carynschmidt5061 lol over here in the NO I have to control my involuntary movement to Hip Hop beats. Not to forget some of the songs are so cringey.
Because of the lockdown we attend a TLM online.
Very well said Hiphoperist🤗
Dawson is pure gold, he has some well valued insights into the Christian tradition that every catholic should know
Not just Catholics, every person descended from Christians
There is an absurd obsession for all that is new, and no one stops to think if that which is new has actually any value apart from just being "new"
.. although actually that seems to be an American tendency (including all of North America)..
Likewise not everything old has any other value aside from being "old". Carnality was rampant in the medieval world trads idolize. Building cathedrals was a way for different cities to one up one another. I see much more sincere Christian worship in evangelical house churches than the most glamorous Catholic cathedrals ever built. Christian history is certainly worth preserving but it's about time trads stopped dumping on people who don't hold to their snobbish standards.
@@chowyee5049 don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Today’s world is full of gaudy lights, billboards, glass boxes, and cracked concrete. It is exceedingly ugly. Why? Partly because we broke from tradition. Just because the motivations of some of the architects were impure surely does not mean that we shouldn’t care about aesthetics at all, or that those cathedrals aren’t objectively better than the miserable places in which many Christians worship today. The building doesn’t MAKE the church, but it certainly communicates something.
@@svedishfisk I have absolutely no problem with traditional architecture. In fact, I very much prefer it to modern aesthetics. My problem is the idolization inherent in traditionalism. I would take an ugly church build yesterday filled sincere Christians over a beautiful one with a thousand year history filled with traditionalist snobs.
@@MNkno Got that right.
Wonderful apologetics, Brian. "The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” Pope Benedict XVI
God bless you, I have had to deal with this argument against tradition a hundred times.
Church wasn't always happy about new, not even in the past. Individual confession, which was brought by Irish monks was opposed for a long time, so did, in fact, gothic srchitecture pr renaissance polyphony. Mandatory celibacy for priests took centuries to fully enforce.
But maybe that's exactly where the difference lays. New expressions of faith needed to show their worth, they were tried and rested for a long time whereas today it is excpected that everything new be accepted right away, without thought and with great enthusiasm because it's trend. But, who marries a trend becomes widower very soon.
What is the Catholic Church without her Traditions? NOTHING
Its just protestantism
@@christopher4926 No there are differences
the catholics pray to the saints and many of the people whom appear in the new testament
the protestants believe you should pray only to Jesus and there’s similar groups which
have split off of the protestant church which believe in praying to both the father and the son.
@@darth3911 we DONT pray to the saints. We pray for them to intervene and watch over us. Same thing Christians do
@@darrellperez1029 Christians should only pray to God. No "saints" needed.
@@voxveritas333 I guess we should just throw out all of Christianity until the protestants came along in the 1500s. Because surely they know more than the church fathers
I think the Catholic Church has traditions because they work. If there is something that needs to be added and it does work. Then by all means add it because it has value. But there are certain things that shouldn’t be added to the church. But that’s just me.
Yup, that is the point of tradition, it works and it has been working for generations. You don't discard what works, you improve on it, build it up. Modernism is revolutionary in as much as it destroys to build a new, without reward to reality but to whims and hatred... hatred in this case of God. And then modernists, like Brian just said, want us to integrate that what hates us, one might as well drink poison... oh wait we did... VII...
Jesus and the Apostles would have been trilingual. Aramaic was the language of Judea at the time, Hebrew was the religious language of the Jews. Greek was the Trade language that the Romans brought to the Holy Land.
The reason Ecclesiastical Latin is important, I recently learned, is because every word has received a blessing. It makes Latin extremely effective against Lucifer and his demons.
What about Latin?
Or was it exclusive to the Romans and a sign that one was in a higher social class?
There's a scene in Passion of the Christ where Christ responds in latin to a question Pilate asked in Aramaic. After Jesus responded, Pilate had a look of surprise on his face. Is it cause of the reason I stated above?
The other thing about Latin is that it is a "dead" language. Meaning it doesn't evolve like English does, and the meaning of each word is static.
Read: it has no nonsensical innovations or slang, such as we have always dealt with, but especially in the current era.
@@JackFalltrades it's not the movie that matters, but the response that Pilate had that tells me what it meant when one knew latin
@@JackFalltrades This is true. In fact, the reason why all the English-speaking countries in the world use a common missal translation (and why there is more emphasis on making the English as close to the Latin as humanly possible in recent years) has to do with countries in the developing world who use the English missal translation to make their own missal translations. They don't translate from Latin because they don't have enough scholars who understand both Latin and the vernacular languages of their people. But they do understand English.
"Culture is the embodiment of beliefs", that's pretty insightful way to think about it. Kinda similar to those trees are known by the fruit they bear, similarly your culture is the fruit of what you believe deep down in your heart.
You're firing on all cylinders, Brian.
Excellent commentary, it’s so refreshing to see people who get it producing videos. Thank you for this video.
I mean, you do such a great job with your content. You are adding so much to the faith in the best way possible. Thank you Brian 🙏
Excellent as always
Brian you are well spoken and very thought provoking.🙏🏽
Wonderful explanation Brian! Thank you for your witness!
Thank you Brian Holdsworth.
I preference to use the term “orthodox” rather than “traditional”.
Same.
@@wilhufftarkin8543 in my humble opinion, The problem is that people think that tradition can be changed. Whereas orthodox is something that is more fixed.
@@stevensonrf Yes. It seems to me that many people think traditional Catholics are traditional because they hold on to something that isn't relevant anymore because it was changed, while the term "orthodox" makes it clear that these things matter very much and will always matter. Edit: Also, when I say I'm an orthodox Catholic I also don't have to make it clear that I'm not a sedevacantist or that I don't reject Vatican 2 or something.
@@wilhufftarkin8543 What’s wrong with either? V2 is evil & sedevacantists have all the old Church fathers on their side.
Barring Padre Pio, the true saints would be sedevacantists today as well.
@@wilhufftarkin8543 Yes I agree Ortrodox Catholic but not Greek or Russian Orthodox they are in Schism & broke away from The Catholic church 📖🙏🛐💯 Catholic
I am amazed again and again how great this channel is.
Glad you enjoy it!
Thanks Brian
Well done 👏
This Video and the Argument you are explaining here is a true blessing for me! God bless you and your Family!
Viva Christo rey!
Great video
Well said!
Oh man, this is going to be good!
One of your best.
I love your intro and outro music. Thanks for clarification on Modernism
Perfectly reasoned. It’s nice when someone from the other corner of the world has the same understanding as yourself..
Eloquently and boldly said
Great analogies will be sharing with my mom
Brian... Salute!
"...trying to express your thoughts with the words of someone who earnestly hates you..."
💯
I thought that was so well expressed, also!
I'm not Catholic but I enjoy your videos a lot, especially the ones on tradition. Very informative.
You should become one
When you open your heart to the Church that Jesus founded, you will experience a peace and joy not found in the secular world. Nothing else can come close to the joy of knowing and loving Jesus Christ.
@@janetmunday1100 I do believe in Jesus, I'm just not sure about the Catholic Church. Could you recommend some youtube channels that explain what Catholics believe and why they believe those things? I don't want to come across any misinformation. Thank You.
@@mapleleafforever109
media.ascensionpress.com/podcast/why-be-catholic-and-not-just-christian/
@@janetmunday1100 Thank You, I'll check it out.
As always, 3 Hail Marys for you 🌹🌹🌹🙏🏻📿 Thank you for this argument.
I had a priest tell me that one of the reasons they also added languages was because back then people would be doing the rosary during the mass because they didn’t understand Latin. So instead of focusing in Jesus being present, people would be doing the rosary
@@JackFalltrades yes here in South Africa too. It's usually the ' Mediterranean' people who say their rosaries during mass. They've always done that. I've never understood why.
Nice vid sir
Brian, you're absolutely right mate...100%
Thank you for this. All discipline should flow from doctrine, which traditions have been found to do. When new ideas don't flow from doctrine, skepticism is often the wisest course. I'd Love to purchase glory and shine just wish they would try to do. more reusable and zero waste packaging, and try to make unscented products.
The first thing that popped into mind with the title was traditional vs modern building designs.
Same
@@francisamielguevarra7203 I suppose you watched his video on that?
Good for you, lad! I think your approach is very suggestive in its apologetics… Apostolic Tradition (without antiquarianisms nor alien innovations): that is essentially the Holy Catholic Church, throughout the ages. With my blessing and encouragement from Spain. +F JM
Contemporary music has its own space outside the mass. The music, art, architecture should also being pointing to reverence toward G
God. The intellectual reverence becomes tangible. The more you take out these things that serve as reverence the more the atmosphere is about the community than it is God.
Words are very important. Words are not arbitrary or relative. Words are, in a sense, incarnational. I think it was Heidegger who described words as "the house of meaning". In words, sound incarnates meaning. Thus words, properly used, are tied directly to things by the shared meaning of the word and the thing.
It is very interesting that the words culture, cult, and cultivate, all come from the same root and have common meaning.
In modern usage "cult" has taken on only a negative meaning, but in the past the word Cult simply referred to the act of worship, and the physical accoutrements of worship.
The origin of all these words comes from the idea of settling a piece of land and tending it, tilling it, and making it fruitful.
Religion, and Culture are inextricably tied together, as you correctly point out. It is not incorrect to say that Culture is always founded upon Cult. In other words, Culture is built upon worship. But in both cases, this is an organic process of tending, guarding, tilling, weeding, planting... but most of all or growth and being fruitful.
For this reason, Tradition (and tradition small t) are organic, growing things. This includes the Church itself. Growth is, by definition, a kind of change. Thus a living Tradition, like fire, is always changing through growth. Growth includes adaption to the season.
However, it is not just any change, or any growth.
A tree does not grow randomly. An apple tree will never suddenly produce oranges. Everything that the tree is, or ever will be, is contained within the seed. The process of tending the tree includes watering the tree, but also pruning the tree. It includes providing fertile soil for food, but also pulling out weeds.
The tree was not better in the beginning, simply because it was younger and smaller. On the contrary, the tree was less perfect then than it will become.
This reflects the notion that the Church was best in the 1st century, for example, and we should always try to recreate or cling to the 1st century model of the Church. No, the Church was intended to grow. The Tree is not meant to be a sapling forever.
However, it is also possible that the tree can become diseased, or can grow in ways that will actually harm it. Thus the need for pruning and maybe at times even surgery. The purpose in cultivating the Tree is to allow the tree to become the fullness of the potential that was contained in the seed.
So how do we judge what growth is natural to the tree, and what is not?
The surest way to judge this is by continuity. We know what kind of tree it is. We have seen it grow from seed to sapling to adult tree. We know something of the pattern of it's growth. Thus if it starts to grow in a way which is grossly out of continuity with its past self, then we can know something is wrong and its time to prune, or maybe to bind the branches or the trunk.
What this means in more direct terms is that the Church will grow and change, Tradition will grow and change, it it cannot change in a way that contradicts its past Truths. What was True in the past is True forever.
So if we look at Gregorian chant, for example. Once upon a time, the Church did not have Gregorian chant, then Gregorian chant was invented and the Church adopted it. Gregorian Chant was in continuity with the past of the Church. It fits within the character of the Church and the Truth. There was always chant, this was just a new kind of chant and moreover, it is fitting of the reverence and beauty of the liturgy.
Another example worthy of considering is something like communion in the hand vs on the tongue. It is demonstrable fact that the early Christians took communion in the hand as a normal practice. Communion on the tongue became the norm of the Church during the early middle ages. Communion on the tongue was a change, but it is fitting, it doesn't contradict anything from the past. Thus it can be not only an allowable change, it can even be a laudatory change. However, by the same stroke, we can never say that communion in the hand is morally wrong, or is not reverent etc, because it was the practice of the Church for centuries. To say that would be to say that the Church was wrong from the beginning about that thing, for hundreds of years.
Then if we look at many current issues like abortion, homosexuality, communion for the divorced and remarried, etc.. these are things that clearly contradict the Truths that the Church has taught for centuries. As such they can never be natural or good kinds of growth. They can only ever be diseased, unnatural growth that will harm the Church.
Now, setting aside specifically Church issues and looking more broadly at Culture and modernity. I would tend to argue that Modernity and Post-Modernity are not simply another form of culture. They are not just foreign cultures to Christian Cultures. In my opinion, they are anti-cultures, or another way of saying it is, they are the death of culture.
All cultures of the past, whether they were good or bad, were at least human. They were outgrowths of humanity. Sometimes they were deeply flawed and sinful as humanity is deeply flawed and sinful, but they were still human. I don't think Post-modernism is human. I think it is fundamentally anti-human. It is purpose built to strip away and destroy humanity itself. Modernism is a deception designed to lead to failure, so that the failure could produce post-modernism, which is essentially, IMO, the philosophy of hell itself.
BRILLIANT!!!!!
Christopher Dawson
G K Chesterton
C S Lewis
Von Hildebrand
Etienne Gilson
Beard turning into a nest.
For some reassurance, look into the Catholic Cathedral in Oakland, designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill. In San Francisco, there is St. Dominic's (beautiful Neo Gothic).
Once formed in the Faith, one cannot help express Christ in all that one does, because it is all about one.... overwhelming Truth. The Truth is a person, Jesus Christ.
One ought not conflate prayer, even the Mass, in the vernacular with concession to the popular culture. It was certainly not to placate popular culture that the Mass in early Rome was said in Latin, but simply to enable the participants in the Mass to understand what prayers etc. were being said.
We’re you there?
@@RJ-bu6es
I'm trying to wrap my mind around that question, but I can't seem to.
His point wasn't merely about latin, but about gregorian chant, traditional architecture (gothic, barroque, romanesque etc). These things were made to express catholic values, while modern art was made to express modern philosophies, which are in contradiction with the Faith
As a Lutheran subscriber to this channel (bear in mind that Lutheran Christianity came out of Catholic culture, and did not reject it, as is sometimes supposed), the same kind of culture war is going on in the Lutheran world. I agree with the sentiments in this video.
I so enjoy the music used briefly in your intro...can you share what it is?
See the description.
A good video. I like to point out that the great cathedrals and music wasn't "contemporary and new" at the time like so many claim, but it was the very best that they could offer. As you note, it was the pinnacle of the craft at that time, but it was organic in the sense that you can see its roots going back through history. When they decided to build a church, they didn't choose some new fad in design and material. Instead, they took what they knew would work and built something using the very best tools and techniques that they had at that time. In doing so, they were honoring the religion. They had lower-quality construction materials and techniques. They could have made the church from wattle and daub. But they chose to use the best stone even though it meant far longer to completion and far higher costs.
I'm Orthodox rather than Catholic, but this guy makes amazing point, I have a lot of respect for the TradCath movement and would say that it is the best hope for mending the schism out there.
A house divided indeed…this stretches across the church and into the political realm as well..I’m curious to see who’s behind both.
Hey, do you have a podcast?
What’s the intro song called?
I love your channel thanks for what you do God bless 🙏🛐💯 Catholic 📖🙏🛐
Add Universalism to your isms.
You should colab with Timothy Flanders from Meaning of Catholic. He talks about culture quite a bit.
This is a good video.
Let me make one point, as a translator and as an Anglican-Episcopal Christian in the Province of Japan: the Gospel and Jesus can cross cultural barriers, but it is not done by adopting the surface format of the target group. It is done with deep knowledge of your culture-of-origin, and deep examination of the target culture, then identifying the deep structures that ARE resonant/compatible/identical in meaning even if not in emphasis or cultural position. You don't go outside the realm.
For example: Traditional Japanese culture is not monotheistic (no concept of 'one God'), and early evangelists starting from Francisco Xavier struggled with how to start to explain Christianity without going off the rails in one direction or another, and at the same time identify resonant ground for the message of the Gospel. To this day, church vocabulary for Catholic, Protestant, and Anglican denominations in Japanese is markedly different. We are all "WIP".
Also, although I can only give examples from the Anglican liturgy here, at various points the collects, readings and prayers for authorized use will differ between the US and Japanese BCP (Book of Common Prayer). Clergy hired for our English-speaking congregation from the US will notice this when they encounter, in English, what is authorized for use within the Province of Japan. In each case, the choice from within the Christian tradition has been to follow Paul's injunction to rejoice with those who are rejoicing and mourn with those who are mourning.
An analogy might be, to minister to heavy metal groups, take a different selection of Psalms, and employ an alternate selection of Old Testament experiences and NT Epistle readings, without going into readings from outside texts currently being shallowly 'discovered' by the secularly trendy who are looking for 'spiritual experience' excitement, instead employing what has been debated and approved by the House of Bishops, not individual preferences when conducting larger group/public worship (as opposed to private study and readings from the Bible, all of which is good and useful at some point).
As I said, good video. Gregorian chant has a place where people enjoy Gregorian chant for itself, not for being trendy.
Keep in mind, traditional Catholics still pray the rosary with the "Oh my Jesus" (distinct from the Jesus Prayer) which, if I'm not mistaken, dates back to our Lady of Fatima, so, just over one hundred years. There's been more time between the second Vatican Council and now than from Fatima to the council.
If the traditionalists were against all change, they wouldn't have accepted this. I don't think modernists are simply able to look at this objectively due to their hatred of Christ, and the faith.
Wow! Not only was that an ugly thing to say but totally lacking in charity toward our fellow Catholics even when you disagree with them.
@@rk43409 - you tell me then, the conclusion you come to when each and every tradition of the Roman right is condemned as backwards, or somehow lacking prior to the 1960s? If one holds such disdain for all these things, what else is there to conclude, but that their perception of the Church Christ founded, and by extension Christ himself, is negative, until it conforms to their preconceived notions of modernist philosophies?
I don't think they hate Christ and the Church so much as they're relativists and so have an intellectual "reason" to not even care.
@@user-rh1jo1yy9e They sound just the opposite of folks like you - who condemn anything AFTER 1970 as tacky, inferior to the Tridentine Mass, and hold a negative perception of anything after 1970 until it conforms to your preconceived notions of traditionalist philosophy.
I laugh at both of you. You both worship a God who doesn't exist in a Church that never has and never will exist. A God who ONLY thinks the way you two knuckleheads do.
@@HolyKhaaaaan - I'm not a Roman Catholic, and I've only attended the Tridentine mass a few times in my life. Perhaps of you had done your homework, you'd realise that the east doesn't have as much a legalistic lense the way traditionalist Catholics do, rather we focus on God through Greek Philosophy. Nice try, there, though, bud, but the second Vatican Council, for US at least, strengthened our tradition, not weakened.
I’m gonna check out Dawson, he sounds great. “Culture is the embodient of belief.” And don’t forget “politics is downstream of culture.” So, political beliefs themselves come from religion, directly or indirectly. So one can’t simply “keep religion out of politics” only “not force their religion through politics”
@Brian Holdsworth... In every age, the Church attempts to Christifiy the culture with varying degrees of success. John Hardon Catholic Dictionary defines culture this way:
CULTURE. The personality of a society. As understood in Catholic social philosophy, it is the totality of a people's traditions (what they believe), attitudes (what they desire), customs (what they do), and institutions (how they live). A culture has roots that go back even centuries and may be far removed from where persons now live. Cultures differ even as individuals differ, since culture is nothing else than the divinely intended distinctiveness of a people, even as individuality is the divinely intended uniqueness of each person. But like individuals, societies have not only their own inherent characteristics but their own separate history of decisions and experiences, which further distinguish one culture from another so that no two are fully the same.
I think you should make a narrower point: yes popular and rock music can be great, but they are not compatible with true sacred music. i think it's ok to appreciate and enjoy this lower form of music so long as it is understood as a lower form. The true problem with Novus Ordo era is loss of the sacred as defined against the profane.
I've thought about this a lot, but I have not yet thought about how modern music has come out of a secular, non-Catholic culture while Gregorian Chant and the organ came out of a specifically Catholic culture. But I think there may also be an argument against your claim. Many pagan cultures have been "appropriated", as it were, by the Catholic Church (I think the term is "spoiling the Egyptians"). Catholicism borrows heavily from Greek philosophy and many of our traditions on certain holidays borrow from pagan cultures, such as the Christmas Tree, or the Easter Bunny. I think that in that same way, the Church can "appropriate" the culture around it by taking the beauty and rejecting the evil. I personally find beauty in some rock and roll music (Pink Floyd for example), and certainly there are a lot of great modern Christian rock songs that promote the faith. I'm curious to see what you would say about my objection.
I'm not Catholic, but this is a very good persentation of the traditional stance.
In what category do you place the philosophy of humanism
Since the reformation Catholicism has had a problem separating theological orthodoxy from aesthetic orthodoxy. The great medieval cathedrals took hundreds of years to build, and the best music of the era required large, skilled choirs. It's impossible to "do" medieval on the cheap. The Victorians tried and with some notable exceptions, Victorian neo-Gothic was some of the first to succumb to the wrecking ball. The finest interpreters of traditional sacred music are entirely secular. It raises interesting questions as to what represents the theatre of the mass (and should we decry theatricality?), and what are its consistent theological themes. If we privilege tradition for its own sake, traditional folk music is also raised to the canonical.
My position is the consequences of Vatican II threw the theological baby out with the bathwater in a bid to be "relevant." However the most fervent supporters of tradition tend to be those most wedded to the aesthetic experience, which they define as intrinsically "Catholic". I struggle with the idea that certain vestments, hats, musical tropes and architectural styles are the sum total of authentic Catholicism, and consequently Christianity. At the same time modernising influences are liturgically uninspiring and aesthetically disposable. I suggest the difference is a lack of ambition on the part of contemporary proponents, not a deficiency in the new. The Black Death and Hundred Years War were not a golden age of Western Christianity, and Catholics fought with one another, en masse, as recently as 1945.
I don't think there's as much to this as the author thinks there is (leaving aside the last council in Musicam Sacram explicitly permits popular forms of music, whether that is liked or not.)
First of all, the idea that all that we cherish exploded fully formed from non-secular sources just isn't so - our cherished pipe organ descends from the Greek hydraulis, a musical instrument of no notable religious virtue. The major scale that forms the basis of Gregorian chant comes to us from written neumes that are religious, but almost certainly which had secular antecedents, and would not have sounded strange to the contemporaries of the first monks who chanted.
Second of all, it shows an illiteracy in contemporary styles to think that modern Christian artists sound all that much like their secular counterparts. Because the contemporary Christian artists had different influences - as lovers of Amy Grant, Michael W Smith, and U2 - their music is janglier, more ambient, less vocally melismatic and entirely distinct from pop radio music. They sound almost nothing alike.
The real reason for the preservation of chant isn't because of silly ideas about "Oh, well that's sorta like secular" - it is because the council said to preserve it, and because our liturgy - the propers and the commons - calls for it. We're supposed to keep chant because the liturgy is incomplete without it, not fanciful ideas about how a song sounds too much like Elvis or whatever.
Here's a counter argument you will agree with.....
Have a talk with Jonathan pageau.
That's a good argument for rejecting much that is modern. But it should be accompanied by a call for faithful Catholic artists today to "sing a new song to the Lord" in manners distinct from pagan pop culture and openness to new expressions of God's unending act of Creation. Surely, the Lord did not stop inspiring Christian ls to produce reverent works centuries ago. We should retain what is good and beautiful from past generations while expecting new generations to contribute to the Lord's glory on earth.
Not all that is good, true, and beautiful belongs in liturgies. But the Mass too can be served by old and new accompaniment.
This argument works for applying Latin traditions in Western spaces or communities that have a Latin heritage. However, I don't see how you could apply this argument to the universal church where foreign Latin traditions have been imposed into ancient cultures. Inculturation seems to me like an important and organic form of development.
The Catholic Church has 20+ rites, the latin rite is one of them. Latin is one of the 3 sacred languages and is used by the latin rite Catholic as it fosters unity, just as usage of sanskrit and classical arabic fosters unity among the non-sanskrit speaking hindus and non-arabic speaking mohammadans, respectively.
Re: inculturation, it may seem innocuous at first, but it is what has led to the destruction of Church discipline in Asia, Africa and South America (esp after Vatican II).
Ave maria.
Inculturation should be used, yes. Not by creating new Rites ex nihilo, but by doing what Sts cyrill and methodius did, adapting what already existed to new peoples. The problem of inculturation is how it's being done after V2, dismantling church traditions for the sake of it
I like your work, however I'm a little confused. I agree with the argument however I was also thinking about how Christian faith interacted with pagan culture?
That’s because pagan cultures were pre-Christian and thus, not as hostile to the truth as post-Christian Western culture is; they had a better sense of the natural law and other truths that one can discover by the exercise of God-given human reason. The best example of this, is that four pagan cultures, the Greeks, the Hindus, the Chinese and even the Mesoamericans all had an understanding of what the Greeks called logos. (In fact the Mesoamerican equivalent of logos appears on the womb of Our Lady of Guadalupe)
@@marklizama5560 so it's fine then that I synthesize my Christian beliefs with aspects of Japanese culture, the two are not in conflict?
@@Michael-mj2hg It depends on which aspects of Japanese culture you want to synthesize; tea culture came directly from the Catholics of Nagasaki via the Jesuit Missionaries.
@@marklizama5560 I get it, thanks it's like the whole Christmas debate. So long has the tradition can be made to serve God faithfully and doesn't contradict dogma it's okay. I like the design of it's traditional buildings, it's philosophy of harmony, and it's appreciation for nature.
@@Michael-mj2hg There some Catholic history in Japan like Saint Paolo Miki and the Japanese Martyrs, and Our Lady of Akita. I especially recommend the whole history of the Japanese community of Nagasaki because it’s quite something.
i only like a handful of Modern churches all where i am form long island
Every moment wasted on arguing over accidents is time that could be used to actually evangelize the world and the culture. We must be certain we are practicing what we are preaching and that we are preaching the truth. But we must not lose sight of what really matters.
Millions are losing their souls and persecution will inevitably come if the train keeps going where it is. We must focus on the core of the Gospel and preach that as Christ`s Church declares it. That is what will save others and that is what will save us. Christ and the Sacraments and the Gospel save. The Deposit of Faith is what all other tradition must be in service of, for the salvation of souls, for the greater glory of God.
Insomuch as they hinder that these acoutrements are idols or where they cause real division among the God`s people. Insofar as they aid the growth of faith and the spread of the Gospel, they are holy and enjoying the fulfillment of their purpose. When they become subjects of pride they are unholy and the higher something by nature the darker it becomes when it falls.
These things are not evil, this way of using them as the object is. They are made to be subjects to worship of God and in service of souls. Man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for Man. Same concept, and Christ is Lord of the Sabbath and the Sabbath ia greater than these as it is one of the Decalogue. They must serve Christ and they do so in the extent they lead us and others to holiness and fail to do so to the extent they work against that. We must ensure we keep proper perspective and everything in its proper order of importance. These things cam be done unintentionally, we are finite creatures after all, but the harm they cause is just as real. The Enemy works through distraction, division, accusation, scapegoating, doubt, fear, and excuse. We must let none of these rule us. Christ is Our Eternal King, let Him have His throne in our hearts.
We have been given a reprieve to prepare, let us not squander it on petty infighting. Know the faith, be strong in Christ, avail in the riches of the Sacraments and Sacred Scripture and evangelize!
God bless us, give us eyes to see and heal these tragic divisions and and disunity between us. Through Our Great High Priest, Just Judge, and Eternal King, Our Blessed Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Lord Jesus, I trust in You. Amen.
Brian would you say that folk music in Mass is akin to the injection of pop culture into the Mass? Seems to me folk music is fairly unpopular. Just trying to understand
Folk music was popular in the 70s.... think hippies, Woodstock, Dylan, etc.
I think it's more a question of music and how it can lead us to different places. There is certain music that calls our minds to worship a God who is greater than us in awe and reverence while more casual music might be better suited to an occasion other than the Mass, and still highly valuable.
What strikes me sometimes in those who want a simple liturgical passage, is that they look so complicated in doing so. It doesn't seem very natural in many cases. It is natural at the hospital though, i mean for docters. Now, i don't want to be alltogether negatif about it, but it is rather stif than communicational, unless you get the feeling the person is very thouroughly pious.
When it comes to architecture I think we can all agree first century jews following christ would be amazed on the architecture of our churches over time
According to Cardinal John Henry Newman, the latin mass has remained almost virtually unchanged since the year 300
@@JackFalltrades it didn't originate in 1570 it was confirmed as the mass of the church in 1570. The church only confirms things when they are under attack and the Council of Trent in the late 15th century was dealing with the heresy of protestantism. John Henry Newman talks about the Council of Trent and the confirming of the mass saying that that was the biggest change it ever went through. The adding of a single prayer
@@JackFalltrades did you not read my initial post? It remained almost virtually unchanged. Why are you even trying to argue?
@@JackFalltrades It did confirm something that already existed. They did not form a new mass right there on the spot they took the most popular form that had been around for over a mellinium, added a prayer for the healing of Christianity (because of the protestant reformation) and made that the official mass of the church. Idk what point you're even trying to make, is this argument going anywhere or is it just for vanity? I'll take the historical research of Cardinal John Henry Newman for more credit
@@JackFalltrades I understand your frustration with other people's nievaté but attacking the latin mass isn't solving the issue. But you seriously can't make the argument that the church is in a better state now than what it was before Vatican II. Sure things were rough in the 50s and I dont want the church to return to the church of the 50s because we'd just have the 60s all over again. But I do think that trads are on the correct path with understanding that returning to the tradition of the church, starting with the latin mass, is a big part in solving the issue. But we would agree that there would still be much to do to continue to fix everything.
@@JackFalltrades I understand. Pride is definitely an issue but don't let that speak for the sanctity of the subject itself. And yes I agree that not all prayers need to be said in latin, I think its useful to know them, or at least be able to recognize them but it's not necessary unless you altar serve the latin mass. But I think those type of people are in the minority, just like most minorities, they scream a lot louder. But I also don't condemn anyone who find harmony or peace in prayer in Latin. The only theological argument I can see for it is that the devil hates Latin because it is the language of the church
Reject Modernity
Embrace Tradition
You can't have culture without cult (literally the definition of religion, classically of course).
My journey as an Atheist toward Catholicism has always been driven by the Aesthetic traditions first.
I think there are really worse things than modern worship music. Well, not all of them, some are kinda bad. But as someone who is highly influenced my the charismatic movement I cannot discard all modern worship music. One must not forget that often enough the lyrics have real depth even if the tunes derive from pop culture. Still, I have lately fallen in love with traditional music and I find that the musical side of it has much more depth than modern worship music. It would be cool if someone found a way to do a bit of combination. Music isn't my greatest talent, so I doubt I will be the one to do this. But the thing is, I kinda find it sad that this generation doesn't have an artistic expression of their own: Something with quality, but still something that we don't have to copy, so we can identify with it. That is also what I like about modern worship music despite the superior musical quality of older works: The lyrics give it sufficient depth and the tunes are "relatable". Not the best humanity can offer, but something you know. Now what I don't say is that you should jump around or sth. like that during mass. I think that one should distinguish where certain elements have their place. Also, quality music would probably help with reverence during mass. Additonally, we shouldn't just copy what the world has to offer. And certainly not to make ourselves more attractive to the world. That doesn't make any sense: Why sould anyone go to chuch because of pop culture that they already have elsewhere? Still, as long as this generations doesn't have something with quality of her own we have to keep both - but be wise with where to put which.
Nicki Minaj and BTS are not the same as Jeremy Riddle or Matt Redman. Contemporary worship is not the same, especially if it’s *true* worship, as contemporary culture. And straw man insinuations don’t help the whole debate. I wish you hadn’t done that, though I so appreciate a lot of what you’ve said (in this video and others).
I get that but I think he was pointing to popular modern culture, not modern Christian culture.
What about someone with old culture who rejects Catholicism? The Assyrian Church for example? They may say that the tradition in the Catholic Church is part of the sacred which makes it hard for them to accept Catholicism. They will say that we are Assyrians, Coptic, etc. We aren’t rites.
What would you say about elements of pagan culture that have become essential to the Church? Aristotle and Plato? Roman architecture? Latin and Greek? Procession, vestments, choirs, genuflection all came from Roman pagan culture and did not grow organically from Christian culture. So why can we adopt and adapt those but not more modern cultural elements? As Nostrae Aetate states, the church rejects nothing that is true and good from other religions and cultures.
In regards to Roman architecture, that was replaced by Gothic architecture, and that was done primarily to show that we were moving beyond Greco-Roman Civilization into a new, universal (Catholic) Christian Civilization.
@@marklizama5560 still there is a lot of Roman architecture and other pagan elements we’ve incorporated over the years: Christmas trees, the Vatican obelisk from Egypt. The list goes on. And @brian holdsworth even defends this more assimilationist approach in his Harry Potter video in terms of literature and philosophy. Why does he advocate a more exclusivist approach with symbols, musical styles, architecture, etc (the meanings of which are in fact far more malleable than literature and philosophy)?
@@PopCultureCatechism Roman architecture returned in the Renaissance when Europeans started adopting an Identitarian view of themselves, and started rejecting the Catholicity of Christian Civilization. Likewise Gregorian Chant and other traditional music styles, which were based off of the Middle Eastern music of the Old Covenant Temple; were replaced with more complex, orchestral styles of music. Some symbols and musical styles and the like, may be more malleable but not the ones that point our senses towards the higher truths and are involved in the good, the true and the beautiful, unless you want argue that our human nature itself is malleable. As for the obelisk and Christmas tree, take a closer look at the history behind those, their origins are much less pagan than you think; also I disagree with @Brian Holdsworth on what he said about Harry Potter, and he and many others misunderstand Tolkien’s works, yes they are not Christian allegories, *however* they are something else, what they are in fact, are *Catholic Typology*.
Regarding anyone who would critique traditional architecture (e.g. in the gothic style)... I honestly can't even fathom it. I've met one person, it's true, who _actually_ seems to think that stark and stale modernist architecture looks beautiful (the more exposed wiring, the better). But the vast majority of people vote with their feet, whenever they play the tourist on holiday. People go to the old cathedrals for beauty, not the new lopsided boxes. Why should the majority of us be tyrannized by the appallingly bland and anti-ornamental aesthetic tastes of modernists?
There's some kind of _weird_ repulsion against beauty, out there, and I don't understand it. I cannot comprehend why anyone with the _choice_ of building the kind of arching architecture they'd surely love to visit and gaze upon on holiday, would instead build a blocky little gym.
By all means, architects: feel free to dazzle us with something *better* and *_even more breathtaking_* than gothic cathedrals! But until you're actually building something better, at least don't build something worse. Keep building gothic cathedrals (or other classically, time-testedly beautiful structures) until you're _actually_ innovating in a way that happens to be even more stunning. And this doesn't mean "impressive mathematics that make us wonder how your blocky monstrosity fails to fall over" -- stunning in the sense of actually beautiful, soothing and refreshing to the soul, a delight to the eyes. Something that actually turns the human mind to the all-surpassing glory of God.
Exactly - You cannot serve two masters.
If you put as much thought into making a good faith argument as you do into promoting beard balm, this might be an interesting video.
This was a good faith argument, art is based on values and modern art is based on modern values incompatible with catholicism
It seems to me so odd that people are so passionate about traditional or modern, which language to use, architecture, etc., while forgetting the most important duty of a Christian, to become a saint and grow in holiness by becoming more like Jesus and following the calling of the Holy Spirit. Does xyz bring you closer to Jesus and in better communion with the saints? Then it's good, otherwise it's not.
For some having Latin mass brings them closer to God, for others it pushes them away.
Stagnation is not necessary for Orthodoxy. That's not to say that anything goes. But rigid interpretation of what constitutes true faith and worship is pharisaical.
You're arguing against something that was not said in this video. You basically just repeated the same thing I described as a strawman argument at the beginning of this video.
Art is only as "good" or "bad" as the nature of its expression.
Arguing that 'modernism is opposed to Catholicism' is besides the point, since the most new philosophical and artistic trend is actually postmodernism which embraces Christianity as a meaningful perspective among many. Modern philosophy is dead for about 60 years now and you do notice that repeated in culture. The hate against religions fades slowly among the young
You would do well to steelman progressive arguments, faulty as they are, before telling them where they went wrong rather than laughing at a fallacy you see but that's not part of their argument. Yes, you strawmanned the progressive argument.
The progressive argument - which I don't entirely agree with - is somewhat like you said. Lemme try to show the progressive argument at its best:
1) Catholicism can be expressed in many ways - for instance, the East and West have different liturgical cultures.
2) Jesus' liturgical culture was a product of his time. Of course He didn't pray in Latin because He was a Jew.
3) Cultures change over time. The Eastern Churches developed the use of icons and Old Church Slavonic and onion-domed cathedrals, while the Western Church went from using Romanesque architecture to Gothic, and developed and homogenised chant.
4) All these cultural developments were in response to culture and place and time.
5) Since the Second Vatican Council permitted a diversity of liturgical culture - despite saying Latin should be preserved and traditional liturgy has "pride of place" - it is only natural that liturgy should develop in the same way it always has - organically, in response to the circumstances of the era.
The flaw in this argument is indeed more or less as you said but show your work. Catholic and Orthodox cultures did kind of become their own thing more or less by the 300s. But they do occasionally draw from the world, and when they draw from the world they draw from those shards of culture that actually reflect the Gospel.
Wedding rings are an example. They were originally used in Egyptian pagan weddings. The Fathers saw, however, they symbolised at least one thing which Christian marriage is definitely about: the eternity of marriage (in this life).
In the Middle Ages through to WWI, the secular culture was very often informed by a Christian culture, and so naturally the Church borrowed from a culture to which she was the mother - and vice versa.
That definitely ceased to be true in many ways during the 60s, when a Rousseau-inspired hippy counterculture started to be a powerful thing. When the culture says "all humans would be good if it wasn't for institutions like religion", why would the Church borrow from it?
That said, while a fair amount of modern liturgy is crap - very much because people are too lazy to do it well - some of it accidentally is at least decently capable of passing on the faith. Say what you will about John Michael Talbot, the Saint Louis Jesuits, and the Liturgy of the Hours, but without those I would not be Catholic. And I see they were informed by truly beautiful things which they, however imperfectly, still carried on from the teaching of Mother Church.
Modern or Traditional , The FINAL DECISION goes to Rome...Rome alone is the Authority , which decides if something is reverent or not reverent ..If something is proper worship or not proper worship....There are 1.2 Billion catholics of different culture... From African dances incorporated in liturgy to Asian Incense and confucian style of bowing incorporated in liturgy....All these things are decided upon by ROME alone... People who kept on insisting Latin Mass are simply ignorant of other Unique Catholic culture...
Let's use organ vs guitar as an example:
Organs have existed since before 200BC, but only made their way into liturgical music from 800-1400AD, augmenting and replacing the a capella worship from before. And yet they are something that more Traditional Catholics will cling to while deriding the use of guitar in mass.
If Catholics in 900AD had not allowed organs to become part of the liturgical worship, mocking them as "modern" and saying that the proper way to worship was only with a capella music, then we would not have the rich tradition of organs in churches that we have today.
In the same way, if we incorporate guitar into mass and use it respectfully, it can become part of our liturgical tradition. Where the instrument originally comes from means nothing, what matters is how respectfully it is used.
And of course God calls for all instruments that have breath to praise Him. That said, the guitar doesn’t pack nearly the same punch as the organ does in Divine Worship. Even looking at details like the fact the organ is built into the church building, the power of the sound waves and sheer number of overtones the organ produces - more than any other instrument, and that when someone is playing the organ in God’s holy temple you can feel both the building and your body rumbling at it’s might. The lute (ancestor of the modern guitar) and harp have always been used in sacred worship, from renaissance times all the way back to the Old Testament, and while absolutely beautiful and glorifying to God, they just don’t pull their weight in the way a pipe organ does. So, there are plenty of reasons for even this.
I kinda agree, I don't think the instrument accompanying you while you sing praise matters as much as the praise itself. You want to change the instrument fine, but you can't change the focus of the praise. Then you changed too much. Imo
I'm muslim and i watching in you're video
The obvious question here is, what is the endgame of progress? At what point do we say, "Yes, we've finally achieved the goals of progress and we can hang up our hats, rest comfortably, and stop progressing"? The answer is that there is none. To stop progressing would be akin to a shark that dies when it stops swimming. It's antithetical to progress. With tradition, we know what the endgame is because we have a concrete set of ideas which it embodies and an image of what the society which tradition creates looks like. You have no such thing with progress because it never has been and never can be achieved. The closest you can get is Revolutionary France, Russia, or China, in which millions died and society was torn apart for the sake of uprooting everything, and all of them ended with the progressives failing and being subsumed by traditionalists. The truth is that a society built on a continuous process which can never end will eventually eat itself because no process can continue indefinitely; this was true of ancient empires like Assyria, Mongolia, and Rome, and it's equally true of any society built on "progress." The only thing that continues growing and devouring everything around itself with no end or regard for anything else is cancer.
Greek was a common language in the Mediterranean at the time of Christ, thus the Bible was written in Greek, except for Matthew and certain parts of the Old Testament. Protestant Modernism is the "synthesis of all heresies" (1907 Pope Pius X). Modernism tended to demolish dogmas, sacraments, the authenticity and genuineness of the Scriptures, the Church, and ecclesiastical authority and discipline. It reduced Christ to human dimensions, and made inspiration a common gift of mankind.
Tradition is revealed truths of faith and morals given by Christ or the Holy Spirit to the Apostles and written in the inspired books of the Bible. The source of all the truths of tradition is divine revelation, either the actual words of Christ or the revelations of the Holy Spirit sent to the Apostles by Christ. "The Holy Spirit . . . will teach you all things" (John 14:26).
Tradition is an unwritten body of law believed by some Jews to have been given by God to Moses. The Pharisees at the time of Christ made a great deal of this tradition.
The Vatican Council defined "If anyone say that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known for certain by the light of reason through the things that are made, let him be anathema."
The Traditionalism teachings led by Huet, bishop of Avranches (1630-1721), the [Fideists] (Latin, [fides], faith); others, e.g., Lammenais (d. 1854) and Bonald (d. 1840), is all false doctrine.