The essence of wokeness is hatred of the inherited body; it manifests in the attempt to erase the inherited body. This can be hatred of the physical body, manifested in the intention to surgically remove its gender-specific parts. It can be hatred of an inherited canon of literature, manifested in the removal of texts from university curricula. It be hatred of civil inheritance as represented by government, law, or other forms of authority (say, the police force), manifested in riots.

The attendant hatred is of any person who retains any form of commitment to any form of the inherited body. The academic cancellation-purge is well-documented by now, as are the physical crimes committed against people and property. Wokeness is not a desire to better understand the past, to admit new perspectives into it, to celebrate past achievements while learning from past failures. It is not the bracing self-reflection that admits that sometimes we were wrong and others were right, or sometimes we were all a little of both; it does not sift and sort. Its characteristic attachments to ecology (of a sort) and indigenous cultures (as viewed through an idolising Western lens) are the supporting acts to the main game, which is the destruction of the Western inheritance.

This being understood, it becomes clear why Traditionis Custodes was, like Thanos, inevitable. Wokeness is a Western phenomenon. It is ubiquitous amongst the privileged. It makes sense that it would get to Rome. At first reading, the document seems well-and-truly OTT. Okay, fine, so you want to discipline some nasty people. But why, we ask, does the discipline of a few members of a subculture require the complete reversal of the principles espoused by previous popes? Why does the discipline of a subculture require the death of an Ordo of which one is the principal inheritor and guardian?

Well, it doesn’t – unless you’re woke, in which case, it’s not enough to introduce new things or to curtail old ones. You have to kill your old stuff dead – not just because it’s old, but because it’s yours.

 A liberal Roman can have any number of opinions about the Old Rite; he can certainly co-exist with it, even if he has no interest in it himself or dislikes its adherents. However, a woke Roman must reject the preconciliar Roman rite, not just because it is preconciliar, but precisely because it is Roman. The Old Rite is the inherited corpus of the woke Roman, so, it has to go. It is the equivalent of the transgender deadname. It’s not just that this thing is past or replaced; it must never be spoken again.

Similarly, the insistence on conformity from one cohort, while the modernists do what they will, makes sense with a woke reading. The woke summons to virtue applies only to the destruction of inheritance, not to the abolition of real injustice in the present day; the woke will abolish the books that (to them) represent the slavery of 100 years ago, while still wearing clothing made in sweat shops. Likewise, the disobedience of the modernists, or pro-abortion politicians, or the devout pilgrims to the sites of false apparitions are, in this context, the equivalent of the sweat-shop owners who can be ignored for the sake of a cheap garment, as long as we defund the police. (And also, of course, those disobediences help kill the thing you want dead.)

Meanwhile, ‘You-brought-this-on-yourself’ is the woke argument in favour of everything from curfews for white men to the destruction of statues. If you hadn’t been slave-owners and wife-beaters then, we wouldn’t be burning your cities now. Ah, but what about the white men who didn’t own slaves or beat their wives? Must we never speak of them? And what of the Old Rite’s history of usage by persons other than the particular offending group?

The charge can only be sustained by the systematic deletion from the narrative of every person who is innocent of it. It also, by the way, ranks the hobby of the self-appointed male blogger higher than the God-sent vocation of the Carmelite nun. It assumes that he is more representative of the culture than she, and that his blogging has more influence on the Church than does her prayer. So, women, that’s how you rank, Carmelite below blogger, spouse below celebrity. Women outside the traditionalist movement – you may wish to consider the possibility that this unpublished rubric also applies to you.

Now, I’m not here to say that Rome should or shouldn’t be woke, or that any given individual has committed an egregious crime by following the woke norms. That’s a different question. I’m just saying that the interpretation fits.

The West is woke. The Old Rite isn’t. There you go.