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The Sacredness of Tradition
 
Alice Von Hildebrand
 
OVER the past thirty years, the secular duel between Satan and the Church has reached 
unheard-of proportions. All the forces of hell seem to be loose, and the Church has been 
shaken to her very foundations. Of Satan's many tools, perhaps the most insidious are 
the hidden techniques he has devised: infiltration from within, and the topic we are 
now addressing - erosion (or outright abolition) of sacred customs and traditions. 
 
With respect to the latter, two questions must be distinguished: first, can customs and 
traditions be legally abrogated by Church authorities? Second, is it desirable that they 
should be eliminated? The answer to the first question is obviously "yes." The Pope, as 
head of the Church, has the right to abolish certain traditions. But the question remains: 
is it desirable that he should do so and does their abolition always serve the good of the 
Church? 
 
Centuries ago, Plato taught: "Any change whatever except from evil is the most 
dangerous of all things."  This is why he urges legislators "to find a way of implanting 
this reverence for antiquity." Alas, since Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church has 
abandoned several of her most venerable customs and traditions, and it is our 
contention that this has both weakened and damaged the spiritual life of the faithful. 
The list is long, but I shall limit myself to some of them. The first that deserves our 
attention is Paul VI's lifting the prohibition to eat meat on Fridays. 
 
Abstinence makes the soul grow stronger
 
It is typical of Catholic theology to stress the unity of body and soul. The idea that our 
bodily actions can have a positive or negative influence on our soul's spiritual 
development is part of our anti-Gnostic Catholic Tradition. Significantly, the major 
world religions prescribe certain dietary laws which their adherents are bound to 
observe. Orthodox Jews are not permitted to eat non-kosher food; Moslems must 
observe the Ramadan; Hindus are vegetarians. St. Benedict wrote in his rule, the model 
for most religious orders, that monks should abstain from meat at all times except 
when either sick or debilitated. 
 
Why were Roman Catholics told to abstain from meat on Fridays? The reason is 
obvious: it was to remind them that our Saviour died for us on that particular day, and 
to invite them to do penance and make sacrifices on that very day in remembrance of 
Christ's crucifixion. Was this positive commandment cruel? No. Did it put the faithful 
under undue stress and difficulty? Clearly not. In her loving wisdom, the Church had 
spelled out several valid excuses that exempted some from this commandment: 
travellers, sick, weak, or elderly people; children under the age of seven; dramatic 
situations (war, famine, etc.) charity (for example, when a Roman Catholic was invited 
by a non-Catholic who forgot to respect the Catholic prohibition and served meat; 
refusal to eat the prepared meal would humiliate the host and constitute a lack of 
charity). 
 
Long established and deeply meaningful, this tradition in no way imposed unbearable 
burdens on the faithful, burdens that 'modern men' could not possibly shoulder. 
Everything spoke in favour of its being preserved; nothing objective could be said in 
favour of its abolition. Why, then, was it abolished? One is tempted to assume that 
Church authorities, under the influence of the spirit of the Sixties, were convinced that 
certain traditions constituted an unnecessary ballast which actually prevented the 
faithful from concentrating on what truly mattered They made the fashionable mistake 
of identifying 'secondary' with 'unimportant,' a confusion which has gained currency 
today and which leads people to break certain moral laws on the ground that they are 
'secondary,' and therefore not important. Abrogating this law has certainly contributed 
to the spiritual decadence and laxity which we witness today. 
 
Granted, Pope Paul VI did invite Catholics to replace abstinence by some other sacrifice 
of their own choosing. But one wonders how many faithful even think about it today. 
The younger generation is now totally unaware that sacrifices are called for on Fridays. 
The sad truth is that - deprived for years of orthodox teaching - they probably do not 
even know what the word 'sacrifice' means. 
 
Kneeling while receiving Holy Communion
 
In the same vein, we can deplore the fact that the tradition of kneeling while receiving 
Holy Communion has been abolished. Whether this abolition was officially prescribed 
by the Holy See or whether individual bishops introduced this 
 
practice in their dioceses is irrelevant. The fact is that, since Vatican II, most altar rails 
have been removed, discouraging or even preventing the faithful from kneeling. In 
Belgium, new churches are so built that kneeling is rendered impossible. The 
congregation sits during the whole Mass; only at the moment of consecration do they 
stand up for a few moments. Once again, a sacred tradition has been ruptured, and we 
can raise the question - why? 
 
A sharp distinction between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, on the one 
hand, and 27,000 Protestant sects on the other, is that the former believe in the Real 
Presence of our Lord and Saviour in the Holy Eucharist while Protestants believe it to 
be a mere symbol. Roman Catholics take seriously the words of Christ "My flesh is food 
indeed, and my blood is drink indeed," and therefore firmly believe that He is 
physically present under the appearance of bread and wine. The only appropriate 
physical response to this unfathomable mystery is adoration, best expressed in our 
culture by kneeling. It would make no sense whatever for Protestants to kneel in front 
of a mere symbol. 
 
If Christ were to appear visibly to us, we would instinctively and immediately 
prostrate ourselves in front of Him (a response exemplified again and again in the 
Gospel). Failing to take the physical posture appropriate for adoration can only weaken 
the faith of the faithful in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. For if spiritual 
beliefs influence bodily behaviour, our bodily behaviour necessarily has an effect upon 
our soul - a psychological truth deeply understood by St. Benedict, the father of 
western monasticism. 
 
One is permitted to raise a question: Was this sacred and deeply meaningful tradition 
abolished to accommodate Protestants who took offense at 'Catholic idolatory'? Was 
this unfortunate step taken to make an ecumenical gesture that would placate our 
separated brethren? Whether it has, in fact, brought Protestants an inch closer to the 
one true faith can be questioned. That it has had a negative effect on the faith of Roman 
Catholics can hardly be contested. 
 
Communion in the hand
 
Communion in the hand is another case in point. This practice was first introduced in 
Belgium by Cardinal Suenans, in flagrant disobedience to the rubrics given by the Holy 
See. Not wishing to publicly reprove a brother bishop, Paul VI decided to lift the ban 
prohibiting Communion in the hand, and left the decision to Individual bishops. 
Overnight the practice was universalized, and there have been some isolated cases of 
priests refusing to give Holy Communion to parishioners who knelt and wished to 
receive on the tongue. In one diocese in Canada, police were actually called to arrest a 
devout family of kneeling communicants. 
 
Apart from the fact that once again, a long established tradition has been broken, 
Communion in the hand has two obvious drawbacks. First of all, we live in a climate of 
desacrilization while what is urgently needed today is to re-establish the sacred in our 
churches. When an object is sacred or precious, the first thing that comes to mind are 
the words: "do not touch it." It is a sign of respect, and when manipulation (from the 
Latin <manus> = hand), becomes commonplace, it is an indication that the duty to 
show reverence to sacred objects and persons is no longer perceived. The prohibition to 
touch objects is rigorously enforced in museums; <a fortiori>, it should be enforced in 
Roman Catholic churches where Christ is physically present. 
 
Moreover, the abolition of this regulation tends to weaken the essential distinction 
which exists between a priest and a lay person. Whereas the former's hands are 
consecrated by the sacrament of Holy Orders, the latter (who may be just as holy or 
even holier as an individual) has not received this privilege. To allow lay people to 
touch the Body of Christ, and to handle the chalice containing His Precious Blood, is 
bound to make the faithful forget the fundamental difference which exists between the 
priesthood of the priest, and what is called the priesthood of all people, strongly 
emphasized by Luther. The priest can consecrate; the people cannot. Priests can forgive 
sin; the people cannot. 
 
Surprisingly enough, some priests encourage this levelling. Many of them choose to 
dress like lay people, making it impossible to distinguish them from laity. Rare are 
those who wear a Roman collar, yet the collar is a symbolic expression of the 
extraordinary dignity priests have received. One is tempted to raise the question: Why 
are many priests so anxious to make people forget that they are ordained? Is it 
uncharitable to assume that it is because, having lost their faith and the <sensus 
supernaturalis>, they can no longer appreciate t      atness of their calling, and the 
awesome responsibility which it carries with it? 
 
Altar girls
 
We cannot conclude without alluding to the last break with tradition which has 
recently taken place in allowing girls to serve at the altar. This took place despite the 
Holy Father's publication in 1980 of <Inaestimabile Donum> which solemnly outlawed 
the practice. Not only did the papal about-face reward disobedience (many bishops had 
allowed this practice in their dioceses in disregard of the Holy See) but, once again, the 
sacred cord of tradition has been dangerously frayed. God, as St. Augustine reminds 
us, can always bring good out of evil, but the fact remains that the spiritual life of the 
faithful is once again put to a severe test. 
 
Contemporary Catholics find themselves more and more jailed in the narrow prison of 
'their' time, 'their' nations, 'their' secular mores, and of the contemporary mediocrity 
which seems to be the birthmark of our epoch. Instead of breathing the pure 
supranational, supra-temporal air of the supernatural, they are more and more forced 
to breathe the fetid air of moral, spiritual, intellectual and artistic decadence; no 
wonder they are gasping for breath. 
 
Not only do we live in an age of 'uncommon nonsense,' but actually in an age of total 
confusion. Men no longer seem capable of discriminating between truth and error, light 
and darkness, good and evil. It is crucial for our very survival that we should go back 
to sanity, and one way of doing so is to fight the unisex, value-free mentality which is 
one of the most deplorable symptoms of our anti-culture. 
 
Men and women, while equal in dignity, are different and therefore are called upon to 
fulfill different functions. Men symbolize the active principle; women the receptive one 
(which is not to be identified with passivity). This complementarily finds its expression 
not only in the mystery of the sexual sphere, but on a much higher level, in the fact that 
the dignity of the priesthood is assigned to men and not to women. It is proper that a 
human male should actively duplicate the words Christ spoke at the Last Supper; while 
to the human female has been assigned the glorious function of sacred receptivity, so 
powerfully expressed in the words of the Holy Virgin, the blessed one among women, 
and the most perfect of all creatures. It was she who gave women their holy motto: "Be 
it DONE unto me according to Thy word." 
 
Secondary does not mean unimportant
 
Tradition (which for Roman Catholics is as important as the Bible) should not be 
limited to matters of dogma and morals. It also includes forms of worship which go 
back for centuries and which establish a living bond between the past of the Church 
and the present. It is most unwise to proclaim that the second form of tradition is 
'secondary' and can therefore be abolished. Let me repeat emphatically; secondary does 
not mean nonimportant; it means less important....but nevertheless of great 
significance. 
 
Should we despair? Far from it. First of all, we have the divine promise that "the gates 
of hell shall not prevail against the Church." And there are hopeful signs. One is the 
revival of the Tridentine Mass which is not only spreading more and more in many 
dioceses, but is attracting a whole crop of young people, starving for a sacredness 
which they rarely find in their parishes. Another is that new religious orders are being 
born to replace those which, because of the unfaithfulness of their members, have fallen 
into total decadence. Gregorian chant (banished from many parishes since Vatican II) is 
now being rediscovered by millions of secular young people who long for sacrality and 
have never tasted the sweetness of this angelic food. 
 
When confronted with secularism, the faithful should always turn to spiritual weapons: 
prayer and sacrifice. But they should also use every legitimate human means, and ask 
their bishops and parish priests to re-establish important traditions such as replacing 
the Blessed Sacrament on the main altar, veiling the tabernacle, having Benediction and 
the Forty Hour devotion reintroduced to parish life. They should do so tirelessly, with 
reverence for the office of our pastors - but with consciousness of their right to fight for 
their spiritual needs.