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"Traditional" was perhaps a poor choice of words. What I think was meant was older, historically white, historically WASP groups.
I'm not saying I think "traditional" is the right phrase. I wouldn't pick it. After all, NPHC AKA is older than NPC DPhiE, and as you mentioned, Catholics and Jewish women founded Theta Phi Alpha and AEPhi as Catholic and Jewish organizations. (And they were Catholic and Jewish at their founding, although they are not today.) Of course, they didn't join NPC until 1951 - but maybe that wasn't just religion. After all, that's the same year the "education" sororities joined NPC as well. (Maybe again it was religion, but I don't know enough about NPC politics that long ago to judge.)
It is worth noting that IFC is more diverse than NPC. NPC has no historically African American groups (Kappa Alpha Psi), no groups that still strongly retain their original religious ties (AEPi), no "major-specific" groups (Triangle). The NPC's rules, created to benefit all sororites and strengthen inter-sorority ties, also bind sororities to a very specific way of doing things, which I think might inhibit its growth in the future. Really, the NPC and IFC are not very similar organizations.
But we're viewing the NPC from an interesting perspective in time. After the early 1900s, no new sororities were founded that managed to become strong and national in scope (DPhiE being the last I think) - except the NPHC sororities, which did not join the NPC. And they developed their own traditions - a very different style of recruitment, traditions such as stepping, strong graduate programs, etc. Things started to change in the '80s with the rise of Hispanic, Asian, area of study, and multicultural organizations. Many of these groups are growing very strong, and Latino orgs even have their own umbrella organization. I suspect that some of these groups will last and some will merge or fold, but I doubt the phenomena will disappear entirely. Today many have 10 or 20 chapters - what about in 50 years? My children or grandchildren will have many more Greek choices to contemplate.
But many of these new groups are not following the NPC mold. Many of the "ethnic" sororities have used the NPHC mold. Not all new sororities have: Perhaps Ceres would want to join the NPC, but at least one engineering sorority (Phi Sigma Rho) was founded based on the premise that female engineers did not have time to go through formal rush. On the other hand, AEPhi may have been founded for Jewish women, but its practices were very close to "Christian" groups. Credit the women behind AKA, DST, SGRho and Zeta for showing college women that there were alternate ways to create a sorority and different traditions that could be made. Today's newest groups have learned that lesson.
One could say these groups are not in the NPC tradition, not for religious or ethnic reasons, but in their use of lines, their hand symbols, their recruitment practices. Instead, they are _more_ in the NPHC tradition, albeit not identical. And the NPHC groups are certainly old enough to be "traditional." It's just slightly different, and slightly younger, than the NPC one. If the newest groups are not traditional, it's a matter of their age, not their style.
The truth is, though, that a lot of us in the NPC only think about the NPC system. There are NPC members who think the NPHC is silly - "We're not segregated any more, why can't they join us?" "What's the point of multicultural sororities? My chapter is diverse." Or "We have all majors, why do ag majors need a special sorority?" Intelligent college women do have the right to find the kind of sorority that's right for them. Luckily, I do believe those NPC-centric women are in the minority. And we like to forget that many groups were at one time white-only, Catholic-only, WASP-only, etc. It's something we'd like to pretend never happened. I know that my least favorite moment in AXD history is when we passed a white-only clause, and that while several founders were against it, at least one spoke in support of it. One could argue that being centered around one race or religion is in fact traditional for sororities rather than the exception, and it's only in the last half-century that we've realized inclusion in preferable to exclusion.
</off soapbox>
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