Traditionalism (19th-century Catholicism)

For the contemporary liturgical movement, see Traditionalist Catholicism.

Traditionalism, in the context of 19th-century Catholicism, refers to a theory which held that all metaphysical, moral, and religious knowledge derives from God's revelation to man and is handed down in an unbroken chain of tradition.^[1] It denied that human reason by itself has the power to attain to any truths in these domains of knowledge.^[2] It arose, mainly in Belgium and France, as a reaction to 18th-century rationalism and can be considered an extreme form of anti-rationalism.^[1]

Its chief proponents were Joseph de Maistre, Louis de Bonald, and Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais.^[1] Their doctrines were advocated in a modified form by Louis Eugène Marie Bautain, Augustin Bonnetty, Casimir Ubaghs, and the philosophers of the Louvain school.^[3] The fundamental distrust of human reason underlying traditionalism was eventually condemned in a number of papal decrees and finally ruled out by the dogmatic constitution Dei Filius during the First Vatican Council in 1870.^[2]

See also

• Catholicism portal

• Counter-Reformation
• Counter-Enlightenment
• Fideism