‘Without Tradition, We Are Cattle’

Rorate Caeli has posted a fine piece of Spanish counterrevolutionary writing from the pen of Juan Manuel de Prada. The author makes some of the same points I have tried to make here on Catholicism.org, notably in Traditionalism is an Affirmation and Catholic and Patriotic.

Nothing pleases more those who wish to reduce us to a lonely crowd than to see us set up bison runs, after we have forgotten the husbandry of the wild bull. Nothing pleases them more than seeing us eat (with delight!) some post-modern concoction cooked with liquid nitrogen, after we have forgotten how to cook (and even enjoy) garlic soup. Nothing pleases them more than to see us dance spasmodically with some tart we don’t even know in a night club, after we forgot how to go country-dancing with the girl next door in the street fair. Nothing pleases them more than watching us sing guitar-led and imbecilic songs during Mass, after we have forgotten liturgical chant. Nothing pleases them more than to give us advice in the choosing of a fiancée through an internet contact agency, after we have rejected our mother’s advice.

That is the way they want us: despoiled of our traditions, reduced to a human-shaped creature that withers around in his own filth pleased with himself, fed with mock, sordid and ridiculous replacements. Turned into cattle, into a herd, from whom they even charge for the provision of substitutions.

De Prada’s patriotic laments about the Spanish bull being replaced by American Bison (in Spain!) remind me of the poet and Catholic convert, Roy Campbell, possibly the most passionate defender of Spanish and Provencal tauromachy in the English language (whose book on the subject is not for the faint of heart).

Read the whole thing. It’s short, and quite worth it.