Bad faith, continued

I waded into this PrayTell discussion about not allowing female altar servers at the Old Mass. I tried to find a non-explosive way to explain to an agitated woman commentor (Ms. Coogan of my previous post) how the traditional Roman mind might work.

My point was that the Traditionalists experienced the last fifty years as including huge losses to their Faith. The Reformers are not yet even finished with changes. So to include with the Old Mass the seeds of the Reformers' deconstructive agenda makes no sense. Asking Traditionalists for a "rational" or "theological" justification of a single rule will not get a satisfactory response. But their real reason --and from their viewpoint protecting the Faith is both rational and theological-- is that this would be heading straight for the tip of the very iceberg they are trying to sail around.

Remember the old poem, "For want of a nail"? I remember bittersweetly the outburst of a priest who was once my mentor and friend, whose conservatism erupted in the following phrase: "The sum total of the non-essentials is the essential!" His overheated point was that small changes, like a small leak in the dike, can eventually disrupt large and valuable things.

Her response was instructive. And not subtle. She emphasized that the Reformers were indeed not finished, and indeed, had not yet even started! Said that Tradition was never a reason to continue a practice. And then she proceeded to pathologize the exclusion of altar girls as part of a larger illness, "fear of female sexuality", a matter "not for theology, but for psychoanalysis."

So, after that, tell me again why the Traditionalists should allow for this, when your response proves rational the very image they hold of you, a tradition-despising radical who is not yet even started on transforming the Faith? And why should they accommodate you and recognize your "female and baptized" value when you consider them pathological, root and branch? And isn't protecting the Faith, as they see it, from madwomen like you a quite "theological" task?

Doesn't your response verify for them --in detail and high volume--that this is not about a single rubric at all, but an even greater loss than the ones they've already suffered?

Talk about irrational.