The True Friends of the People Are Traditionalists

Forgotten Truths

The True Friends of the People Are Traditionalists

Sometimes we traditionalists are impressed by a revolutionary propaganda continuously telling us that we are outdated and unrealistic. We should be convinced of the opposite. The seed of the future lies with tradition.

Those who appear to be riding the last wave of progress are often just following revolutionary utopias, whose sole practical effect is to destroy the remains of Christendom. To help confirm this conviction, we present today some words of St. Pius X about the solution of the progress/tradition dilemna.

St. Pius X
In the maze of current opinions, these priests [dedicated to the works of Catholic Action] should not allow themselves to be led astray, attracted by the mirage of a false democracy. They should not borrow from the rhetoric of the worst enemies of the Church and of the people, high-flown phrases full of promises, as high-sounding as they are unattainable. They should be convinced that the social question and social science did not arise just yesterday; that the Church and the State, in harmonious accord, have always raised up fruitful organizations to attain this end; that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by consenting to compromising alliances, does not need to free herself from her past.

All that she must do is to retake, with the help of true workers for the social restoration, the organisms shattered by the Revolution, adapting them in the same Christian spirit that inspired them to the new environment created by the material development of today’s society. For the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries nor innovators, but traditionalists.

(Encyclical Notre Charge Apostolique,
Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1910,
vol.18, p. 803)

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Posted August 9, 2008

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