Get With the Times, by Anthony Esolen

Miniver cursed the commonplace
  And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediæval grace
  Of iron clothing. 
(from “Miniver Cheevy,” by Edwin Arlington Robinson)

Pope Francis has called traditionalism the dead faith of the living. It’s an easy thing to criticize. You can do it by assuming that everyone who dearly loves tradition is a boor, stolid and mulish, who says that we must continue to do things this way because that’s the way we’ve always done them. Or you can assume that the traditionalist looks on the past as Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy does, turning it into a fairy tale, an escape from the grit of one’s time, all while ignoring the filth and the wickedness of the old days. The traditionalists, Francis believes, are like the one or the other….

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