Writing for Rorate Caeli, Father Richard Cipolla has some good and priestly words for his readers (see especially the emboldened paragraph below). To his concerns that the social questions should be important to traditionalists, we add that doctrinal concerns ought to be as well.
The traditionalist as an effete aesthete is a grotesque thing.
This should be a cautionary tale for some in the Traditional movement in the Catholic Church today. The secular press already has the Catholic Church divided into two parties: Traditional and Liberal. The defense of and the living out of Tradition can never become sectarian, can never become a party platform. It must never close it on itself for that act of closing in on itself is the antithesis of what it means to be Catholic. The Traditional movement must always be on guard against liturgical fixation and effeteness and in particular must reject with utmost vehemence any association, even if unintended, with anyone even remotely related to a “gay subculture.” The Traditional movement must be actively engaged in the great social questions of the day and must do so not merely by referring to the documents and teaching of the Tradition but also by engaging forcefully in an intellectual way with those forces both outside and within the Church that are in opposition to Tradition.
But we must above all remember that the purpose of Tradition is to hand down the Truth, the whole Truth, to real men and women. It is not to just pass on ideas. It is to pass on the Good News of salvation in the person of Jesus Christ and this not in a disinterested way but rather in a hands-on way, in a truly pastoral way that takes the sinner where he is and speaks to him of his need to repent in the context of the mercy of God shown in the Cross of Jesus Christ and to bring him to a complete and radical conversion of mind and heart, and thence to the peace and joy that is found in the Catholic Church.
