Alison Girone
CV NEWS FEED // A retired professor of moral theology is among those who had strong opinions about a conference that a community of former “traditionalist” Catholics who are in “recovery” will hold this summer.
Trad Recovery is an online community that YouTuber Laura Vander Vos founded to aid former “traditionalist” Catholics who are “seeking full integration into the Catholic Church.” The group defines Traditionalism as “an ideology that includes rejection of or suspicion of the entirety or parts of the Magisterium from the Second Vatican Council up to the present day, as well as the reform of the Roman Rite.”
The group will host a “Catholics in Communion Conference” in July in southwestern Montana. Speakers who have agreed to present at the conference, pending diocesan approval, include Michael Lofton; Dom Dalmass; Jeremiah Bannister; Sr. Mary Eucharista, SMMC; and Andrew Bartel, OP, according to Trad Recovery’s website. Fr. Eric Gilbaugh, a parish priest for the Diocese of Helena, has received the diocese’s approval.
News of the conference resulted in a wave of indignant reactions from Latin Mass Catholics on social media.
Former professor Janet E. Smith was among those who responded publicly to news of the conference.
“If Catholics want to hold a conference for Catholics who have been wounded by the modern Church, they will likely need a huge venue,” Smith wrote in an opinion piece that was published in Crisis Magazine. She declared that the conference, which will take place at a small venue in Montana ought to “shame” the “conservatives and trads,” into hosting a counter-conference for those afflicted by the Church since Vatican II.
“It will require renting out sports arenas in multiple metro areas to accommodate a mere fraction of the wounded. Millions have left the Church since the sixties, and millions of those who remain are exceedingly unhappy with much of what is happening in the Church,” she wrote.
In her satirical response to the conference, Smith proposed themed breakout sessions for traumatized “trads,” such as “How to avoid going to hell,” and “therapeutic activities,” like “a fire pit into which participants can toss ‘song’ books, banners, screens used to project lyrics, the book “Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing,” and copies of the National Catholic Reporter.
“Stay tuned,” she concluded, “Organizers are just getting started and will undoubtedly have more ideas on how to minister to those traumatized by the practices of the modernistic Church,” such as Crocs-wearing Eucharistic ministers and blessings of same-sex couples.
