[NYer]

check out the links at the above web site

[Antoninus]

An article from the Southern Poverly Law Center? It should be pointed out that these people are communists. They despise the Catholic Church, so it's not surprising to me that they'd lash out at traditional Catholics in this way, attempting to brand them all as "anti-Semites."

Granted, some of the wackier "trads" definitely manifest some definite anti-Semitic characteristics, but to try to paint the entire movement as anti-Semitic is simply slanderous. The anti-Semites are generally fringies.

[Wings-n-Wind]

Julian Bond
First Center president and member of the board

This almost explains everything...

I wouldn't get too wrapped around the axle becasue of these guys... Fringe effects at best...IMHO

Blessings

[Claud]

No question there are certain anti-Semitic tendencies within traditionalism. I think that "gathering near the Philadelphia airport" may be the Catholic Family News conference which I once attended. I was REALLY put off by some of the comments of the speakers, and in particular, the fact that the table next to ours was proudly selling "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", that piece of crap fakery that keeps rearing its ugly head despite the fact that it is a known and proven fraud.

And the Remnant....well, IMHO that paper is closing in on itself and its owns self-delusions.

But I have to stick up for Ferrara here, in that I've never heard such nonsense from him--and I think the author of this piece is trying to tag him with guilt by association.

[xzins]

I was going to post this earlier, but I knew it would be misperceived if a protestant did so.

So, if I understand this correctly, these guys are to the right of David Duke.

Too bad catholicism isn't premillennial. It would end a lot of this nonsense.

[marsh_of_mists]

Most traditionalist Catholics are not anti-Semitic, although left-wing Catholics and non-Catholic would like you to believe that. It's just that the fringier, crankier ones often stand out more (such as it is with everything). All "traditionalist" means is a Catholic who prefers the pre-Vatican II rites and practices and would like to see them revived. What's wrong with that? Most traditionalists are not sedevacantists, SSPV, or even SSPX; they attend indults, FSSP, ICKSP, etc. This is all typical misrepresentation from the Left, no different from saying that all pro-border-control people are racists. Are there pro-border-control people who are racist? Yes. Do most racists tend to be pro-border-control? Well, probably. But these fringe elements betoken nothing about the general movement. We should, of course, loudly reject, although it will not stop the stereotypes and insinuations from the other side.

[Thorin]

I am not a traditionalist, but Mark Potok is a professional leftist agitator, who makes money by scaring people into believing the next pogrom is right around the corner. I would take anything he says with a huge grain of salt.

[ArrogantBustard]

SPLC is a bunch of communist agitators. They have a lousy reputation within the pro-gun cummunity for their inability to tell the truth.

[Teófilo]

Folks, Mr. Mark Potok sent me this message in reaction to my blogpost, which I now want to share with you:

Pedro,

Thanks for the heads up. I have a couple of responses to your response. First, I'm somewhat mystified as to how my editorial got posted to various traditionalist blogs without the bloggers noticing at all that in fact this was just the lead-in to a huge package of news stories about the radical traditionalists. There are, in addition to the editorial, about six highly detailed stories, including one that includes detailed profiles of 12 major radical traditionalist groups. People are taking the editorial as the whole story, and that's not remotely true. I'm amazed at this, but there it is -- there's another 20,000 words or so on this, completely unnoticed.

Here's the url that will get you to the whole package. Three of the sidebars are right next to the main; the fourth, "The Dirty Dozen," is listed in the right navigation bar:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/i...cle.jsp? aid=719

My second point, re your criticism of us for not drawing a sufficient distinction between radical traditionalists and traditionalist, I refer you to the follow paragraph in our main story:

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/i...le.jsp? pid=1292

"Vatican II did not ban these time-honored celebrations, and many Catholics who call themselves "traditionalists" continue to worship in this manner in churches that remain an official part of the Holy See (these churches are awarded an "indult" that allows them to continue celebrating the Latin Mass). The vast majority of those who practice Catholicism in this older form are unrelated to the radical traditionalist Catholics who gathered in Philadelphia. Indeed, the groups that gave presentations at the CFN conference preach a theology specifically rejected by the Vatican, and many have been declared schismatic, or officially separated from the church."

I appreciate your comments, your interest, and your courtesy in letting me know what you'd written. I'd be curious to know what you think about the whole report, as opposed to my summarizing editorial up front. Perhaps you could even post it to the traditionalist sites that also, apparently, have mistaken the editorial for the entire package of stories.

Very sincerely,

Mark Potok
Director, Intelligence Project
Editor, Intelligence Report
SPLC

[SuziQ]

Don't you just love all this 'guilt by association'?

I don't believe ANYTHING that comes out of Morris Deas' organization!

[narses]

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[Cicero]

This is a load of horse manure.

I'm not especially sympathetic to some of these movements, but they don't waste their time on antisemitism. Actually, people like Fr. Gruner are much too busy bashing the Vatican to worry too much about Jews.

[TradicalRC]

Organizations such as the American Bar Association, the National Education Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and the Friends of the United Nations recognized the Center as a leader in anti-bias litigation and education. President Clinton's Initiative on Race cited the Center's tolerance education work as a national model.

Um, I guess I'm an extremist.

[BlackElk]

Thank you, as ever, NYer, for all that you do here.

When pre-Vatican II liturgies for Good Friday referenced "perfidious Jews" as bearing some special responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ, that reference was hardly a bedrock of our Catholic Faith. Further, it references a small number of Jews in a crowd in Jerusalem orchestrated by the High Priest of the Temple into responding to Pilate's: What then shall I do with Jesus Christ? by saying: Crucify him! Crucify Him!" The pious Jewish women who were preparing the Passover Seder for their families in towns wherever Jews lived were not referenced as "perfidious." Nor were the Jewish scholars lovingly contemplating Torah with their families or students. Nor the simple Jewish workmen of whatever degree of piety or not who were busy as carpenters, vineyard workers, mechanics, farmers, etc. Nor is "perfidious" some sort of default description of all Jews then and now. Joseph, Mary, Jesus, Peter and each other Apostle, Joseph of Arimethea, St. Paul, St. Stephen and each other Christian before the Council of Jerusalem were Jews by ancestry. Certainly the liturgy did not reference them as "perfidious" simply because they were Jews ancestrally.

Those who recognize Willie Horton as a murderer are not claiming that all blacks are murderers. Likewise, Charles Manson and whites or Carlos the Jackal and Hispanics.

Nonetheless, is it reasonable to assume that many in the Church hierarchy thought, and reasonably so, that many in the pews were not making the appropriate distinctions as to "perfidious" Jews especially a mere two decades after the Holocaust. Shamefully, anti-Semitism (the actual generalized kind) was all too common in the pews back in those days when I was growing up.

Annas and Caiphas may have been Temple officials but that does not bind us as Catholics to honor their remarkable second response to Pilate who said: But I find no fault in this Man! To which, Annas and/or Caiphas replied: Let His Blood be upon us and upon our children! (not that Anyone had authorized Annas and/or Caiaphas to bring curses and punishment upon those not present and therefore not guilty of the specific sins of Annas and Caiaphas and their associates/Misery apparently loved company even then!). Those present and screaming: Crucify Him! bear moral guilt for their sins as do we all. Jesus Christ was crucified for the sins committed and to be committed by all mankind and not just by Jews. Other than Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, who in the history of all mankind has been sinless and therefore free of guilt for the necessity that God the Father send His only begotten Son to be crucified in atonement for OUR sins?

I sincerely hope that this Mark Potok is not related to the superb Jewish novelist, scholar and University of Pennsylvania professor Chaim Potok who wrote The Chosen, The Promise and My Name is Asher Lev, among others, and a surprisingly conservative and anti-soviet non-fiction account of his experiences visiting Jews persecuted by the soviets which apparently had quite an effect on his own ideology which had been somewhat naive.

Mark Potok, in any event, does not display as sophisticated an understanding of the nuances in Catholicism as Chaim Potok displayed as to the tapestry of Judaism and its schools of thought. This is not surprising since Mark Potok, related or not, works for the egregious Southern Poverty Law Center which lacks a reputation for scholarship or integrity.

Eric Rudolph (who bombed the Birmingham abortion mill and remained at large for several skillful years in the southern mountains) seems rather unlikely to be a Catholic at all much less a traditionalist Catholic (an ill-defined term if ever there was one). He may have meant to name James Kopp, a Lutheran who converted to Catholicism and became a devotee of the Tridentine Mass while hiding in Ireland, participated in Operation Rescue, shot and killed abortionist Dr. Slepian at Slepian's home in suburban Buffalo, New York. That was Kopp's act and not that of other Catholics, much less that of all Catholics.

As one who prefers the Tridentine Mass, I would argue that "Traditionalist" as an adjective modifying "Catholic" ought not to be applied to those merely doing the light lifting of preferring (a matter of taste, really) the Tridentine Mass over the Novus Ordo but rather to those who, whatever their preferred liturgy, are first and foremost Catholics "in communion with the Holy See," recognizing and submitting to papal authority and obedient to a fault in all things moral. This means, at minimum, that "traditional" Catholics cannot be those excommunicated or reveling in their naked defiance of and contempt for papal authority that has always been the hallmark of the SSPX schism.

I have no idea of whether or not Fr. Gruner said Mass at an anti-Semitic conference. For Catholics to shun Fr. Gruner should require no more than his absolute refusal to obey his ecclesiastical superiors despite his sacred vow of obedience taken before God at his ordination. Likewise all SSPX priests and clergy for the same reason. There is no question that some of them, like Bishop Williamson, are also barking anti-Semitic moonbats and Holocaust deniers (therefore out of touch with historic reality as well).

If the answer to any question is a promotion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as factually true or intellectually respectable, then it must have been an uncommonly silly question.

As always, NYer, may God bless you and yours.