Why Every Catholic Is a Traditional Catholic (Or Should Be), by Fr. John A. Perricone

By Fr. John A. Perricone, Crisis Magazine, Feb. 26, 2026

Fr. John A. Perricone, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Iona University in New Rochelle, New York. His articles have appeared in St. John’s Law Review, The Latin Mass, New Oxford Review and The Journal of Catholic Legal Studies. He can be reached at www.fatherperricone.com.

The weapon of choice for all radical ideologues is the manipulation of words and their meanings, and the latest target has been ‘tradition.’

’Tis a pity when a word dies. It is conceived in the womb of a certain culture, and it gestates in that culture until its meaning is set as firmly as the facets of a diamond. Words then become the privileged communication of truth to other men. If reckless men begin assigning different meanings to words, different from the meanings that they have borne over time immemorial, human communication comes to a halt. One man will mean one thing, still another man something completely different. Manipulating words weakens a culture, casts it into a spiral of disequilibrium. Chaos results.

Since totalitarians depend upon chaos, the manipulation of words is a paramount strategy. No thinker has analyzed this “death of words” with greater trenchancy than George Orwell. In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” he brilliantly demonstrates how vague, euphemistic, and simplified language narrows the range of human imagination and enables authoritarian power. Political language is designed to hide rather than express the truth. He believed that bad language can stem from poor thinking, but sloppy and dishonest language can corrupt thought. …

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