As a member of what we used to call “Generation X” (before our society more or less forgot that there are people my age at all), the headline to this piece on Fr. Z’s fine blog is music to your humble Blog Goliard’s ears.

The post inspired the following longish comment, which is being posted here as well, as yours truly is happy with the effort it represents, in summing up the position of some of us traditionalists of a certain age.

So many things were swept away in the 1960s and 1970s, and not just in the Church. As a lawyer, your humble Blog Goliard also thinks immediately of the radical and willful breaking from previous restraint and precedent exemplified by the Warren Court nationally, and the Traynor Court in California.

If the towering arrogance and self-centeredness of these people wasn’t sufficiently clear at the time, it is now. For the erstwhile iconoclasts now whine that we can’t possibly make this or that change, discard this or that aspect of their glorious handiwork. Don’t we realize that we are obliged to adhere faithfully to all the precedents and traditions handed down to us by our elders? Don’t we realize that change will be disruptive, and disheartening to the poor souls in the pews?

(If you ever find yourself bereft of a good definition of “chutzpah”, that right there would do in a pinch.)

Of course, there’s a paradox that arises from where your humble Blog Goliard is standing as well. How can I condemn them for having disrespected their elders and rejected their heritage, whilst I work to sweep away so many of the things that they, my elders, have wrought and seek longingly to have my generation adopt and carry on? Or, more tartly: how can I possibly resent and undermine my forebears for having committed the crime of resenting and undermining their forebears?

So they’ve given me, in many cases, stones to eat instead of bread. Or at least what I perceive to be stones. Doesn’t humility require me to ask on what grounds I can claim the authority to judge what are stones and what are bread? Don’t filial piety and obedience to tradition oblige me to keep trying to make the best use of the stones I can? (I mean nutritively…not simply chucking the stones at Marty Haugen.)

The best one can do is to let go, as best one can, of the bitterness and grudges that percolate in the soul. However much it may feel good and seem entirely justified to get worked up into an anti-Boomer lather, it isn’t helpful to anyone in the end.

And we should remember that not all those of the previous generation—maybe not, if truth be known, even anywhere near most of the previous generation—support and honor the wreckage that has been wrought. Much of it was accomplished over the strong objections of this blogger’s own parents, for starters.

Finally, if things are to be pushed back towards earlier traditions, we younger folk driving the change must make absolutely sure that we are truly in conformity with and submitting to those traditions, rather than using an idealized (or even largely fabricated) vision of such traditions as mere cover for the imposition of our own particular tastes, our own Zetigeist, and our own wills.

One generation of radicals refashioning everything into the image and likeness of themselves is, after all, quite enough.