As our frequent readers (if there are any) know, I'm Catholic.
I'm a very orthodox Catholic as well, but I don't fit into that group of Catholics which Catholic's call "Trads", let alone "Rad Trads". The "trad" in that moniker stands for "traditionalist" and the "rad", when its applied, stands for "radical".
Christianity is the largest religion in the world, and the largest Christian religion is Catholicism, which was also the first Christian religion.1 Nonetheless, in the US, which is such a Protestant country that it doesn't realize it's a Protestant country, probably only Catholics know of the existence of Trads and Rad Trads.2 Lots of people are aware that there's a split in the Catholic Church between liberals and conservatives, and that with the aged in control of the upper reaches of the Church right now there's a seeming push towards liberalism, but few outside the Church are aware of Catholic Traditionalist, who are conservative, and then some.
I should note that by using the term "orthodox", I'm in the conservative camp, which is by far the largest part of the loyal Catholic body in the US, and probably globally. Use of the term "orthodox" here is probably confusing to non-Catholics, and even to some Catholics, as it naturally recalls the Orthodox Churches, by which most Americans mean the Eastern Orthodox. There are also the Oriental Orthodox, being that body of Apostolic Christians who were separated from the rest of the Church and who didn't make it to the later councils. All three larger bodies, the Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox, are highly similar in most ways but have endured separations due to various reasons. The schism between Catholics and the Easter Orthodox was the most serious, although but for political reason within Orthodoxy, it'd be over now. It will end at some point, hopefully soon.
Anyhow, when the schism came about, both Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox referred to themselves as being "orthodox", which for the most part, they actually are. Orthodox Catholics hold to the magisterium of the Church, and the Eastern Orthodox hold to the tenants of Eastern Orthodoxy, both of which overlap to an enormous degree. By being "orthodox", members were declaring they did not hold heretical views. The Church was already known as the Universal Church, and in Latin "universal' is catholic, so when the Eastern Orthodox separated, they had to call themselves something, and they came to be called the Orthodox Church as a symbol that they held orthodox theology, although there was somewhat of a split in views on some things between the East and West.
Anyhow, Catholics who call themselves "orthodox" mean that they hold the full magisterium in their beliefs, and do not agree with innovations that some liberal Catholics would interject. True orthodox Catholics make absolutely everyone uncomfortable on the religious left and right, and on the political left and right.
And then there's the Trads.
Orthodox beliefs are one thing, but traditionalism is another. I say that to note it, not to condemn it.
Traditionalist of any kind have a strong attraction to tradition. I know that's kind of a "d'uh" statement, but it's one we have to start with. Chesterton, who admired tradition, defined it as follows, with this quote ironically often being used in part to condemn tradition, failing to note the second part about the "arrogant oligarchy":
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy.
Chesterton, of course, also gave us Chesterton's Fence, which holds:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
So who and what are Catholic Traditionalists?
That's a really interesting question.
Wikipedia, which frankly isn't the font of knowledge so commonly believed, defines them as follows:
Traditionalist Catholicism is a movement encompassing members of the Catholic Church and offshoot groups of the Catholic Church, which emphasizes beliefs, practices, customs, traditions, liturgical forms, devotions and presentations of teaching associated with the Church before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).Of particular emphasis among Traditionalist Catholics is the Tridentine Mass, a form of the Roman Rite largely replaced in general use by the post-Second Vatican Council Mass of Paul VI.
Wikipedia, footnotes omitted.
I guess that's right, but it's more than that, as I'll eventually get to in this long boring entry.
Born in 1963, like most Catholics alive today, I don't remember the Tridentine Mass. And I'm a very Western Catholic. The Ordinary Form of the Mass is the only one I've ever seen in a Latin Rite Church. I've heard Latin interjected into the Mass, which has become increasingly common in recent years, but I've never heard a Latin Mass.3 Indeed, due to the controversy surrounding the Pope's recent reduction in the allowance of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, as It's now called, I had to look it up and found that it didn't match at all what my expectations were. I frankly thought, naively, that for the most part the Latin Mass was the current Ordinary Form, pretty much, in Latin. No, not at all.
Indeed, the current Ordinary From is not only in the "vernacular", i.e., the language of the culture it is said in, but it reformed the presentation in other very useful and profound ways, greatly expanding liturgical readings in both the Old and New Testaments.4 The improvements were good ones.
This isn't to fault the Tridentine Mass, which was the form of the Mass said between 1570 and 1962. It's interesting to note, as is so often missed, that the Tridentine Mass was not "the original form of the Mass" but rather one that came in after the Reformation was already underway. The Tridentine Mass came in with Pope Pius V's bull Quo Primum which made his revised Roman Missal obligatory throughout the Latin Church, except for those places and congregations whose distinct rites could demonstrate an antiquity of two hundred years or more. Indeed, some of those other Rites still survive, although they are fairly rare. It should additionally be noted, this didn't impact the Eastern Rite at all.
This made a lot of sense, and it explains a lot about the Latin Rite. Prior to Quo Primum there were a lot of local forms of the Mass. This isn't to say that you couldn't go from one place to another and recognize the Mass, but rather that there were a lot of local variations in it. While I don't know it to be the motivator, faced with the Protestant Rebellion, making things more uniform made a lot of sense.
Also making a lot of sense, in an era in which language differences were even more profound than they are today, was having the Latin Rite in Latin. Latin remained the language of the educated well into the Renaissance, when French began to replace it, but even up into the early 20th Century many very well-educated people learned Latin and some Greek. To some extent, it's a shame this didn't continue on, and frankly Latin education's decline was a victim of the Church going to the vernacular after 1962.
Anyhow, what made sense in 1570 didn't by 1962, and the Church was now all over the globe and celebrating the Mass in a lot of places that had no cultural or historical connection to Latin at all. Vietnam, for example, which has a notable Catholic population, wouldn't have a group of people who'd have a historical connection with Latin. That Latin went was not only to be expected, but a good thing.
Latin didn't go because of Vatican II. Indeed, the Tidentine Mass did not fade because of Vatican II either. The Ordinary Form was brought in by the Pope separately. That's commonly misunderstood. But Vatican II brought in a lot of changes, and with the changes Vatican II brought in, came a lot of local changes that were done in it's "spirit".
Alter rails came out, local Priests made all sorts of changes inside churches, and some made some pretty big departures from orthodoxy as things got, frankly a bit out of hand in some places.5 Architecturally, St. Anthony's in Casper Wyoming is a good example of this. St. Anthony's endured a lot of architectural insult as a result of this era. The marble altar rail came out, heavy brass lanterns disappeared, one of the confessionals was moved for a stand for musicians, and the pews were cocked at an odd angle. None of them helped the appearance of the church, and since that time additional violence has been done to it for cooling systems and PA systems. If I were the pastor of the Church, which of course I am not and will never be, I'd reverse them all.
I recall some parishioners expressing discontent about all of this, but then middle-aged Catholics of the 70s and early 80s had grown up in an era in which Priests commanded a lot of respect culturally and by tradition. They might grouse, but just a little, and in muted form. Younger Catholics of the 60s through the 80s were part of the overall culturally destructive Baby Boom generation, so they couldn't be expected to complain, and probably for that matter a lot of them supported what they were seeing, which fit right in with their Weltanschauung. They still, in many instances, but not in all, feel that way. Indeed, some never felt that way.
In our Third Law of History, we observed that "Culture is sticky, but plastic." By this we meant that cultures retain a cultural memory, even if it changes. It's not always accurate, but the degree to which things are retained, particularly things of value, is often stunning, even if a person didn't always experience it, themselves.
Which takes us to Wounded Knee.
Recently we had an entire series of posts on the 1973 Siege at Wounded Knee. If you look that up, you'll find that it ostensibly was about discontent over a trial election, but everyone knows it was about a lot more than that, and that it happened at the same general location where the 1891 "final" battle of the Plains Indians Wars, which is to say the final battle of the Indian Wars in general, occured.
Eh? What's this have to do with Catholic Trads?
We'll get to that.
This may simply seem to be a byproduct of the 1960s, by which we mean that decade that really began in the early 60s and ran roughly to 1973, but it isn't, completely. It is partially. Beyond that, however, what it reflects is a long smoldering recollection by Native Americans of what was lost. There's a reason that the Native resistors at that event appeared the way they did, with clothing of the American West, a style that had been affected to some degree by Natives in the late 19th Century. The protest was over their condition, and what they had lost, and a strong indicator that they knew just what that was.
The shock to Native cultures in what would become the United States had begun in 1607 when the first English settlers attempted to establish a colony, and it continued through, well, to this very day. The Battle of Wounded Knee in 1891 made it plain, however, that their cause was lost with finality. But their days of true sovereignty and independence were not forgotten. They just smoldered. The American Indian Movement, Wounded Knee, and the occupation of Alcatraz all occured when whatever was smoldering burst into flame. The fire didn't create what was hoped, but it's never really gone out.
Cultural reactions are often like that.
The flood of change and modernity that came in post Vatican II worked that way as well.
Parishioners, accustomed to acceptance, by and large accepted what occured reactions ranging from joy to mute acceptance to smoldering discontent. Even from the onset, however, there were some who just wouldn't go along.
By and large, a lot of those people seemed, well, weird. Observing the 1917 Code of Cannon Law on dress, in the case of women, you could tell who they were, if they were not old, by their retention of the wearing of mantilla's, a sort of lace head covering, by the fact that they would not take communion from an extraordinary minister, and by the fact that they kneeled to receive communion and took it on the tongue6 , all of which were very visible symbols that they weren't going along with changes. The 1917 Code of Canon Law had required head coverings for women, based on the writings of St. Paul on that topic, although it had fallen largely out of use by the mid 70s. Communion had been on the tongue for an extremely long time, if not originally, and it had been received kneeling, at the now absent alter rail.7 Most Catholics simply adjusted, but they did not. There were not many of them, however.
In some quarters, resistance went further. In France, Cardinal Lefebvre formed the Society of Saint Pius X, which rejected the changes wholesale and nearly went into schism, although careful actions by the Papacy prevented that from occurring. As the SSPX spread, which is not to say that it became large, Traditionalist, or more appropriately Radical Traditionalist, sometimes now had a place to attend Mass that met their outlook.
Catholic (SSPX) Chapel of the Annunciation, Ft. Collins Colorado.
I've passed by this church many times but this was the first time I stopped. I knew it was a Catholic church of some sort, but I didn't know that it was a Society of St. Pius X Chapel.
The Society of St. Pius X is a controversial Catholic organization that at one time teetered on the brink of being declared irregular. Under the last three Popes a dedicated effort to keep that from occurring was undertaken and now the SSPX has a somewhat more regular status with the Church but it is still somewhat on the outside, rather than fully on the inside. When I last checked, which is awhile back, they had been granted the right to perform sacraments, but a person really ought to check if they're a Catholic and planning on going to a SSPX service.
This church isn't really in Ft. Collins (at least not yet), but on a less and less rural road between Ft. Collins and Windsor Colorado. Technically its a chapel because, I think, canonically the SSPX are outside of the regular diocese for a region and their churches do not, therefore, have full church status in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Again, I'm not an expert on this by any means.
This chapel appears to be an offshoot of St. Isadore the Farmer church in Denver, and served by it.
Chances are good that the Church would have slowly corrected the bigger abuses that came about after Vatican II without much fanfare or notably controversy but for one thing, the Long Lent of 2002. For Catholics in the United States, and to some degree elsewhere in the Western World, that event fanned the smoldering embers, and they burst into flames.
The Long Lent of 2002 was the year that the homosexual priest abuse scandal broke out. This was later studied in depth by the Church, resulting in the well known and heavily debated John Jay Report, which concluded among other things that the majority of offenders had been in seminaries in the 40s and 50s, and the acts had peaked in the 60s and 70s. A lot of things, we'd note, peaked in the 60s and 70s. While heavily criticized, the Church reacted significantly, with one of hte most notable reactions being a struggle to make sure that seminaries were free of abuse and orthodox.
Indeed, the reaction to the crisis has been much different than often publically portrayed. While some Catholics of weak faith left the Church, by and large the Church maintained steady numbers throughout the crisis and into the present day. Departures were offset by entries, as Protestants began to more actively abandon their denominations and enter the Church. Moreover, as the Internet made resources freely available, young Catholics took advantage of them and self-educated in their faith, turning them towards orthodoxy. As time went on, the demographic evolution meant that from Generation Jones on down, average Catholics were increasingly more orthodox, and this was true of new Priests as well. Of course, many rank and file Priest and Parishioners had remained orthodox all along. Having said that, due to the operation of age, changes came slowly as Priests who had come of age or graduated seminary in the 60s and 70s hung on to the changes that been made in that time period. This is still the case, with it additionally being the case that older Bishops are often of that era, although some of them are actually conservative firebrands.
That latter fact perhaps demonstrates that once things caught on fire, they really started burning. Catholics who had more or less put up with things being dissatisfactory to them, suddenly quite begin that way, all the way from issues large to small. Topics ranged from getting rid of the guitar mass (thankfully) to bringing back the Latin Mass. Indeed, the Extraordinary Form of the Mass came back, due to Papal authorization, and spread fairly significantly.
As this occured, the ranks of the Trads increased, jointed by near Trads. Rad Trads increases as well. All of these groups were heavily represented by those in Gen X through Gen Z. Where available, Trad gravitated towards the Latin Mass, and Rad Trads certainly did. That leads to observations such as this:
I do not typically attend the Traditional Latin Mass (I can hardly get the eight of us to the local parish five minutes away on time). But this is where you will find young Catholic families. The younger generation is rebelling against modernity.Views
There's a lot to be said by that observation.
I myself made a Mass attendance change recently, which is what brings this up, sort of.
I was baptized at the downtown parish and basically grew up attending it, although my parents would occasionally go to the nearby, smaller neighborhood parish. It's closer, but not much, so we were equidistant, basically, to downtown. When my son was first born, we went there, but we soon switched to the large across town parish, which had a better cry room. When the kids were older, we started going downtown again. I became really comfortable with that parish, and served as a lector and in other ways. All in all, over about a 20-year span, it really became my home parish.
After our most recent Bishop came in, it became clear that a determination had been made to make that the Hispanic Parish. That's fine, and that evolution has happened all over, but it also meant that there was really no place left for a guy like me. This was particularly so as I always attend early morning Mass. So I went to the big across town parish.
The priest there was an excellent one, whom I first encountered when I lived in Laramie. He as the priest at the Newman Center, and was one of the priests that baptized our children across town (they were both baptized at that parish). My wife, who is not Catholic, really likes him, although she's not a frequent Mass goer. When Masses resumed post COVID, the early morning Mass there was at 7:30 a.m., in order to allow time to clean the Church between Masses. I really liked that.
That Priest has now retired. Indeed, the Priest who was longest at the downtown parish while I was there is soon to retire. The priest who was a the neighborhood church went back to his native India, all in short order.
The new priest downtown is an excellent Wyoming homegrown priest who was born in Puerto Rico, probably prefect for his assignment. At the big across town parish, a solid priest who had the oddity of being in one town for most of his priesthood has come in. He's a good confessor, but not a great homilist by any measure. At the neighborhood church, however, a new, quite young, and highly orthodox Priest, is now there. I've started going there.
That he's quite young is interesting in and of itself. Extremely articulate and with acute observations, I've never encountered a homilist quite like him. Others must have thought the same as, on Sunday mornings, the early morning Mass, I'm seeing a lot of the old orthodox Catholics that I knew from downtown, whom I'd note are not Trads. I'm also seeing, however, a fair number of Trads.
Indeed, I've never encountered so many Trads routinely at Mass before, mostly identifiable, I should note, due to the appearance of the women. They are very conservatively dressed, but not necessarily "plain" dressed, particularly for younger women. They wear the mantilla. At least one of the young women who affects this appearance is with an older couple (not as old as me) who must be her parents, but who are not dressed in that fashion, which raises another point. They may not be Trads, but they're likely conservative orthodox or perhaps near Trads. That would likely describe the young couple who sat in front of me last Sunday, who were dressed in contemporary fashion, but with very nice clothing. The young man was wearing dress slacks, shirt and tie, something that is unusual for young men in this region to wear anywhere. When going to Communion, they crossed lines so that they'd receive from the Priest and not the Deacon, a very Trad thing to do, but they didn't drop to their knees when receiving (and in fairness, the young woman was holding a baby and could hardly do that).
One family of Trads that goes to that Mass I know, and like me, the family has migrated from the downtown Parish, to the across town one, to here. Clearly the conservative and orthodox of all stripes are coming here, packing at least two of the Masses, to hear from the orthodox young Priest.
And his homilies aren't necessarily of the type that would make a person feel all warm and fuzzy. One of the first ones I heard, or perhaps the very first one I heard, was one I've written about earlier, that being the "Uncomfortable Homily":
The Uncomfortable Homily.
The young pastor of one of the church's of the triparish gives homilies that are really hard to ignore. Impossible, in fact. They're very orthodox, but also almost guaranteed, quite frequently, to make every one in the parish squirm. Indeed, so much so that I had decided not to post this at all, and then I started watching legislators who would raise a Christian flag make some, well morally debatable decisions, so I decided to revive it.
The four sins were:
1. Murder.
2. Failing to pay the servant his just wage.
3. Sodomy4. Abusing immigrants.
He had these as the four sins "that really tick God off".
Probably the only one of these that doesn't make somebody upset is the first one. It's pretty obvious that you shouldn't kill other people.
I'm going to dive into these a bit, save for murder, which probably causes people who stop in here to wonder, "when is he every going to get back to the point of this blog?";
That's not something that fits into the Protestant Health and Wealth Gospel at all. It's also not one that fits very well into the world outlook of my Republican Catholic friends either, who would no doubt agree with topics 1 and 3, but who might squirm at 2 and 4. For that matter, Catholic liberals might rejoice at 2 and 4, but balk in a major way at 3.
A homily that makes everyone uncomfortable is probably what everyone needs to hear.
The Trads might need to hear it less than the others, however. They're not killing anyone, most of them probably not only are paying their servants their just wages, they likely don't have any, they're not practicing homosexuality, and they likely aren't abusing immigrants.
Pope Francis seems to think that some of them were acting without due respect for his office, and that is a danger of setting yourself apart. You can get arrogant. That provided his stated basis for clamping down on the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. When the Pope greatly restricted the celebration of the Extraordinary Form in 2021, I thought the controversy it caused would rapidly fade, but it hasn't.
That's in part because Traditionalist have kept it alive, but the Pope, while certainly not intending to, helped keep it alive by convening the Synod on Synodality, which hasn't yet taken place, but which will this Fall. The process of convening and gathering the Synod has made a lot of Western orthodox Catholics uncomfortable, and it certainly has the Trads. While Pope Francis' style may very well contain an element of gathering opposition to things in order to expose it to light, and thereby bring an end to it, the inclusion of people like Fr. James Martin, S.J. can't help but make the orthodox, conservative, and the traditionalist suspicious. The entire process has pushed people who already were opposed to the Pope further in that direction, and made cautious orthodox, such as myself, come over to the "not keen on Pope Francis" camp. So, perhaps not too surprisingly, where the Trads have a Tridentine Mass available, they'll travel some distance to go it. Where they don't, as here, they're gathering where the Priest is clearly orthodox.
But they aren't the only ones.
I see the Mass packed with people that I know went to another Parish. Some went downtown and now feel homeless, something I warned might happen as the focus of that Church was directed towards a specific group. Attendees at the across town Parish who went there, as I did, probably grew weary of the non-challenging homilies that didn't really focus on the crisis of daily living.
And it is a crisis.
That is, living in our times is a crisis. Or our times are in crisis. It's pretty clear.
And modernity brought that crisis about.
The post World War Two evolution of Americans from human beings into "consumers", and the surrendering of economic life of all types to capitalism brought it about. Nothing matters other than corporate profits. Even biology is now bought and sold to serve the corporate masters. The fences were taken down, and the metaphorical bulldozers came in.
Millions are sick of it, but millions don't know where to go. Quite a few have gone into drugs and alcohol, which the corporate masters are only too happy to provide.
Which brings us to this.
Can authentic religious traditionalism truly make it in a non-traditional world? Indeed, can traditionalism at all, in any authentic sense, make it in a non-traditional world which, by its very nature, is set against tradition.
We have to be careful here, of course. Critics would note that the world never really stops moving, and therefore all traditions are subject to change, but that's simply incorrect. Indeed, the very long retention of some traditions in many cultures proves the opposite of that, and the preservation of the existential certainly does. Indeed, Catholicism shows the long retention of things in and of itself, although this falls outside the category of tradition, as writings on the early Mass show it to be, well, the Mass, as Protestants are often shocked to learn. I.e., Christians were celebrating on Sundays a gathering recognizable as the Christian Mass.
But is this true, overall:
The younger generation is rebelling against modernity.
Clearly not all of them all. A trip anywhere there are people of thirty, not traditionally regarded as young" and younger will reveal plenty of heavily tattooed, pink hair, sporting people, gender bending, and any number of things which can not be regarded as traditional. Oddly enough, however, they're lashing out against the real world of modernity as well. But what is deeply authentic traditionalism in this context?
Clearly, some of the Trads have applied it in their family lives. But to really be traditional overall, it'd have to go some distance beyond that, it seems to me. One young woman I was somewhat familiar with, for example, was clearly a Trad from a Trad family, but it was also one in which policing was an occupation. All the children became very Trad, one I somewhat knew being in the seminary briefly, and one that I didn't entered an Eastern Rite seminary. One seems to have entered agriculture, a very traditional occupation, but the young woman entered the Sherriff's Office, not a traditional occupation for a woman at all, although certainly one that women do today.
That's just an illustration, of course, but the larger argument would be here that traditionalism more or less has to be agrarianism to really buck full societal traditionalism in this day and age.
Or so it seems to me.
Footnotes.
1. I know some American Protestants will dispute that, but it's completely counterfactual to maintain otherwise.
2. Indeed, the US is such an English Reformation contrary that to be a knowledgeable Catholic is to constantly be presented with the myths of the English Reformation by people who have only those myths to go by, even if they're non-religious. Even some Catholics believe these myths, in no small part because existing in a sea of Protestantism means that quite a few Catholics are heavily Protestantized.
3. When I was a kid, probably in grade school I remember being at a Mass at Our Lady of Fatima in Casper when I turned around at the Sign of Peace and a friend of my father's, sitting behind me, greeted me with Pax vorbiscum, Latin for "Peace be with you". I had to ask my father
4. Protestants who aren't familiar with the Catholic Church are often shocked to learn that the Church includes a lot of the Old Testament into its liturgy.
5. There are no surviving altar rails that I've seen in Wyoming. Indeed, I can't immediately recall having been in a Catholic Church that had an altar rail in recent years, although I well remember the one that was in St. Anthony's in Casper.
6. Extraordinary minsters are those Catholics appointed within their parish to administer communion. They do not conscecrate the hosts, but merely administer communion.
The practice is really supposed to be limited to situations in which the number of people strain the ability of the Priests and a Deacons to administer communion, but it's unfortunately become routine for Mass and those so appointed will actually step up and volunteer if there do not appear to be any at the Mass. Only very recently have I seen a Priest actually raise a hand to turn one back when not needed, and frankly, they're very rarely ever needed.
Rad Trads, and a lot of Trads, will not receive from an Extraordinary Minister for some reason, perhaps they feel the practice is abused. Some will not receive from a Deacon, and I suspect that some object as many Extraordinary Ministers are women.
7. Unfortunately, people don't accurately remember that people filed up to the altar rail, kneeled, and the Priest went down the rail to the waiting parishoners.
Now, a lot of Trads and Rad Trads drop to kneel in front of the Priest which, as we know file in lines up to the Priests, is a surprise if you are not ready for it. Generally, I've grown used to it so I expect it, but this was not always so, and given the nature of line psychology, I'm amazed that I haven't seen somebody trip over a suddenly kneeling person.
FWIW, Communion was originally in the hand, but many people regard the on the tongue administration of Communion, which was long common in the Latin Rite, to be more reverant. Communion is administered differently in the Eastern Rite. It is on the tongue, but with a host that has been dipped in the Precious Blood.
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