Now here’s an interesting question, and it struck me while doing the morning trawl, one thing led to another led to another and before I knew it I found myself in the website of a convent scanning their FAQ page. What struck me about it was their answer:

“This is one of the hardest of all questions to answer because the person asking it usually has her own ideas about what “traditional” means. . . .”

This really opens a door into talking about what it means to be “traditional” because you have to start by asking the background question – what do YOU mean by “traditional”? In my experience in the indie community it generally falls into two categories (which sometimes but not always overlap).

Category A is ritual. I say ritual and not liturgy because ritual encompasses more than “just” liturgy. Frequently people define “traditional” or traditionalist, or traditionalism by the forms of ritual used in the life of the community. “Traditional” communities often seek to use “old” rituals, and to execute them with a level of precision that would make a drill seargent weep for joy. “Traditional” communities often like “the old language” – and use it liberally throughout their ritual year.

Category B is doctrine. “Traditional” communities in category B emphsise a set of doctrines that they hold to be the “traditional” teaching of “The Church”. Often this body of dictates is a set collection frozen in time, reflecting the real or imagined golden age of “The Church”.

The difficulty with these two (often overlapping) sets is that they are wholly unsuited to the OC/IC ethos. Which brings us back to the question: What is traditional (in our context)?