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If there is anything we should have learned from the pontificate of Pope Francis, it is that insults directed at whole categories of people - clergy, large families, whatever - are not medicinal. They only create grief, bitterness and paranoia. 1/
Over the years I have defended ‘trad’ women against the accusation that they look as if they have ‘escaped from an Amish farm’ lmschairman.org/2014/06/tracey… 2/
I have defended them against the most bitter of all accusations in the current clinate: of anti-semitism. lmschairman.org/2018/02/an-att… 3/
We are attacked by supposedly conservative people in the Catholic Herald and the Catholic Truth Society, as well as The Tablet and Pray Tell. We get it from every direction. lmschairman.org/2011/06/repent… 4/
I follow the UK Catholic press pretty closely, and I can tell you that there is simply no parallel between the way Trads are pilloried and libelled and any other group. The same is true looking at established figures and clergy on Social Media. 5/
Have you ever seen a two-minutes’ hate on charismatic Catholics in a newspaper or established opinion website? Feminist Catholics? Conservative Catholics? Me neither. It seems Trads are uniquely worthy of attack, not by internet nobodies, but real figures. 6/
We are the ‘other’. Even people who go to the Traditional Mass want to distance themselves from ‘those Trads’. Oh but I was forgetting: Trads are not worthy of charity or pastoral care. The Church teaches us to crush the bruised read: right? 7/
Wrong. Trads are as worthy as anyone of charity. They have souls to save. If you condescend to talk to them you will find they have often made great sacrifices to do what they believe the Church is asking them to do. 8/
If you don’t want to insert yourself into this pattern of Trad-bashing, and get criticised by people like me, it’s easy: just don’t do it. Don’t imply that there is a special category of Catholic Low-life called ‘the Trads’. 8/
Hatred of any group of the Faithful is the beginning of schism. Let’s have a discussion about ideas. But stop assuming one grumpy person you’ve met allows you to tar thousands of your brothers with hateful characteristics. It’s as easy as that. /End
