Ranting versus Tragedy

By roger | Published: 27 June 2010

Hmm … I have wondered to myself: Is it worth posting this – even in this secondary blog? Evidently, I have decided yes.

Basically I am pasting in here, a quick comment I posted in another forum. Though off-the cuff, it expresses things I want to develop in more depth soon. My comment came in response to something at Rorate Caeli, which impressed me:

“We really are so saddened by the comments we are forced to reject or delete, even in such a harmless post as the last one, on the 400th anniversary of the Douay-Rheims Bible.

Why all the bile? Why the bitterness? Why the sarcasm and intellectual arrogance that never end?

Comment threads are closed for all posts during the weekend, and existing comments will remain hidden during that period: a good moment for prayer and meditation. Silentium.”

I responded with these words:

“I want to CONGRATULATE the decision you undertook here for silentium.

Re:

“We really are so saddened by the comments we are forced to reject or delete …”

I am sorry for your sadness but your sadness – your Christian feeling I would say – only serves to heighten my already considerable respect for you.

This bile, this bitterness, this sarcasm, this intellectual arrogance as you put it, is mysterious to me, and I hope to many others as well.

I also wonder how much, how very dearly it is COSTING the Defence of the Tradition?

Costing us all, when such attitudes are all-too-evident to less traditional Catholics.

I would like to think that part of the problem here is that – by the Grace of God, not intellectual superiority! – Traditionalists are acutely AWAKE to the Tragedy of the so-called “Spirit of Vatican II”.

To be awake to this Tragedy is far better than to be asleep, naturally. It is also of course better than apathy.

A certain anger is better than sleepiness or apathy …

Still this anger of being awake can easily curdle into bitterness.

These are matters that really deserve very deep prayer and contemplation.

As I have tried to contemplate it – trying to look too at the bitterness in my own heart – it seems to me that the less bitter I will become, the more I can feel truly saddened by the Tragedy.

This is why paradoxically, I am glad to hear you are “saddened”. Such feeling is important. Sadness and bitterness are very different things …

Thank you once more for the silentium. I pray this call for contemplation will bear rich fruit.”

I want to say more at my main blog in time. For now, I will admit that although I distinguish between levels of feeling – bitterness and ranting is both easier and more shallow than a true feeling for tragedy – to do more than distinguish is no easy thing.

Certainly I need to pray to overcome such facile superficiality in myself. Lord help me, help us to really feel and thus to act, rather than to succumb to bitterness and thus to ranting or dilettantism. Help me, help us to be truly CREATIVE in the face of Tragedy …

Or to put this in images more consonant with the spirituality to which this website aspires: A ranting, bitter heart is not a PIERCED heart. Lord, let ours hearts be pierced, like Thine …

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