There I was thinking I was a Traditionalist when according to Frank Wright I am in fact a Modernist and of course a heretic. May I state once again that I admit to being a heretic but I am not an apostate. What he means by Traditionalism is something quite different from that which I respect rather than adhere to if one can adhere to a general theory of the source of religions.
Who is Frank Wright when he’s at home? Enter the name in the search box of youtube and be prepared for the deluge. His political analysis of the march of Globalism is excellent and is delivered with witty asides, memes and serious foolery. Essentially we are living in a constructed reality aimed at dissolving nation states into cupasoup bland uniformity at the behest of ‘stakeholders’.
Does Frank believe that outside the Catholic Church there is no redemption? Though he has never uttered that precise phrase I think that his attitude is adjacent to that old time Catholicism. Is that a bad thing? On the whole it is not; most people are not prepared to wait for the answer to ‘what is truth’. They want it straight and unequivocal and they also want eschatology not ecology. Do I agree with the moral teaching of the Catholic Church? Yes I do. I realize that I may be going close to the Voltairean position that religion is good for the masses in that it gives them a definite moral path they can follow. I think he recommended it for his butler. The populace is safer without the bewilderment of comparative religion. Who was it said that a little comparative religion leaves you with comparatively little religion?
I’m a heretic so what I offer is in Frank Wright’s opinion entirely useless and proves that I am foundered in Modernism. Is religion like sums in Arithmetic where there is only one right answer. A certain simplistic view of religious truth would hold that this is so. Atheists and agnostics agree with this. ‘Look’, they say, ‘they all of them claim that their truth is the only one’. ‘They can’t all be true so it is rational to decline to believe any of them until the issue is decided’.
The Traditionalist (Perennialist) would argue that the outcome of multiple truths does not end in relativism. The absolute is incapable of being expressed in direct language. It is apophatic. However to put everyone under ‘the cloud of unknowing’ is to risk them being drenched by uncertainty. One should not do anything to weaken the ‘simple’ faith of others. Say your own prayers.------------
