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The Church's rejection of Traditionalism did not stern from adesire to effect an accommodation with science; it preceded the efforts to reconcile science and religion. The Church rejected Traditionalism because it could not accept the Traditionalist vision of the interaction between religious and secular history. The French Traditionalists had sought to provide a continuity over time that is not retrospective. However, in order to make their case within the framework of the discourse of their time, they had to adopt the language and perspective of retrospection. They were ultimately unable to escape the constraints of the historical mentality through the expansion of the concept of tradition, however attractive the idea continued to appear weIl into the twentieth century.¹ Although the tradition the Traditionalists provided appeared to be both prospective and eternal, the account that they gave of the tradition was a retrospective one; they had to justify the tradition in retrospective and historicist terms. Their account of the Tradition is ultimately an account from outside, an historical account, and not a nomothetical or apocalyptic account.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-2508-6_8

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