When you tell people that you want to start a quarterly online written and audio magazine, they hit you with questions. Why a magazine focused on tradition? There’s already so much writing out there, why add to the pile? What’s the point anyway, and where are you going to go with this?
These are good questions, and as I thought about them, I realized that they gave me the outline of an introduction to this inaugural issue of Tradition Magazine, Trad Mag for short.
Let’s start with the first question. Why a magazine about tradition?
The simple answer is that there is a rich, Catholic tradition that is at risk of being forgotten. Each issue of Tradition Magazine is a curation of items from across Catholic tradition, juxtaposed with submissions from contemporary authors.
Catholic tradition is wrapped around the solid core of the Church’s teaching Magisterium. But we’re not just going to recite doctrine here. In the following issue you’ll encounter philosophy, ghost stories, rank snobbery, worldliness, wisdom, forgotten customs, outright silliness and practical advice. If there is an overall reaction I hope to evoke, it is wonder and delight. And in among these richly coloured passages, these shining pieces of a larger whole, you may discover ways to live a good life. Trad Mag isn’t here to sell these ideas to you. It’s an anthology in the old meaning of the word – a collection of flowers.
Today, tradition isn’t just our Catholic patrimony, it’s also an identity for some. Trad Mag will surely walk the same paths as many people who call themselves trad or traditional, but the magazine does not reduce to their identities. This is no more a TradCath exhortation than it is a TradWife lifestyle guide. Trad Mag is also not Traditionalist in the sense in which some understand thinkers like René Guenon, although I would suggest that the perennial philosophy echoes with the truth of the Gospel. Instead, Trad Mag is designed as an introduction for those interested in Catholicism, and a supplement for those who are already immersed in our tradition.
So why start another magazine when the market is so cluttered already? Certainly the market for the printed word is contracting. But the written and spoken word is currently having a little renaissance on platforms like Substack and in podcast audio. Much of Catholic tradition is locked away behind paywalls, hidden in old books or obscured in archaic translations. People have more time to listen than to read. That’s why there is room for an audio magazine.
And we will need to look to our Catholic traditions in the storm that seems to be rolling toward us. Across Europe and in Canada, Catholic churches are being burned down with little in the way of justice. Even reading from the Bible in public has become controversial. Jesus says “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” (Matthew 5:11) Tradition tells us what people did when things went this way before.
In times when things are going wrong, people often think about the Fall of Rome. I do too, but my mind turns to those early Christians, Roman and barbarian, who realized that unless they took action their traditions would be lost. In their case it was a problem of preservation. As infrastructure, bureaucracy and communications collapsed, these early Christians struggled to preserve classical culture along with the writings of the Church. What they did started something that would go on for centuries. What emerged from it was the great synthesis of faith and reason in high medieval thought. I understand that making collections of Catholic tradition isn’t going to accomplish anything like that. But it might inspire the people who will.
So much has been forgotten already. In his novel, Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee has a professor describe his deracinated, tradition-less students: “Post-Christian, posthistorical, postliterate, they might as well have been hatched from eggs yesterday.” It doesn’t matter whether you see yourself as the professor or the student in this description. Tradition needs to be taught, and it needs to be learned.
Trad Mag is beginning this exploration of tradition with a Catholic sacrament that will touch almost all of us, even if we are only witnesses: Marriage.
Of marriage, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has this to say:
The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament.
The elements of this description will be the frame for this issue of Trad Mag.
What is this matrimonial covenant? In Part One, we will answer that question with passages from the Bible, a medieval ghost story, Nicholas Sledge of Catholic Manhood, Pope Leo XIII and a prayerbook. Then we turn to the structure and the component parts, the form and matter of the sacrament. For the form of marriage in Part Two we will hear from the Sarum Missal, then from Pope Piux XI, Saint Paul, Saint John Chrysostom, Aaron Debusschere, G. K. Chesterton, and Saint Thomas Aquinas. To learn about the matter in Part Three we have Leon Podles, Quinton Peralta, Aristotle, and Jacques de Vitry as he turns up his nose at the superstitious wedding customs of his social inferiors.
The Catechism tells us that the sacrament of marriage has three functions. It exists for the good of the spouses. That topic is explored in Part Four, where we will hear from Charles Coloumbe, Saint Augustine, the Goodman of Paris and Byzantine Emperor Leo III. Marriage is also for the production of children. Part Five will look at this through Saint Augustine, Plato and Erasmus. Bonnie Landry spells out what it can mean for a Catholic marriage to provide for the education of children in Part Six, and in the last part of this issue, Part Seven, we take a look at how people might enter into the married state through Patrick O’Hearn’s account of Catholic courtship and the traditional feast of Saint Catherine. Then we’ll feel the pain of Pope Innocent III as he fielded weird marriage questions from across Christendom and hear about a pact with the devil that took a surprising turn into a Catholic marriage in another story from the Middle Ages.
What’s next for this magazine? The plan for Trad Mag is to continue to explore the wondrous and the delightful in Catholic tradition on a quarterly schedule. Now that Trad Mag Issue One is out, it’s time to think about Trad Mag Issue Two, planned for October on the seasonally appropriate theme of “Death”.
I hope that there will be many more issues of Trad Mag – but that hope is dependent on your help.
Most importantly, we hope that you will pray for all of us, both for our authors and for the small team working on this magazine.
You can help by signing up for Trad Mag on Substack or on the podcast, and you can help by rating and reviewing the podcast to boost it in the algorithm. A lot of people have been involved in bringing Trad Mag to you, and you can help cover our production costs with a paid subscription here on Substack, by buying us a beer, or by buying our merch, which features some of the snappiest lines in each new issue. This is a labour of love for us all, but we all have other loves and obligations. Your support will help keep Trad Mag going into the future.
We want to keep our focus on audio. If you are skilled at audio editing, available to help out quarterly, and looking to volunteer for something Catholic and traditional, we would love to hear from you.
Last of all, Trad Mag is looking for writers. If you have an original, sparkling, faithful Catholic pitch or article on the topic of Death, the team and I would love to hear from you, from now until July 15, 2024, at info@tradmag.org.
Hugh Hunter, PhD
Editor, Tradition Magazine
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