MiTHology (4.0)

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Chapter 6: Fallen Away

After the wedding, we moved to a new town, and joined a new church: another ultramodern one, a big flat gray building from the ‘70s, no kneelers in the sanctuary, the tabernacle off to the side somewhere, a time for “personal testimonies” after each Mass, and a big emphasis on social activism. I threw myself into parish involvement – but, somehow, it all felt very fake and flat. I had a hard time relating. Something about it felt… unimportant, shallow, uninspiring, watery – and I felt that that must be my fault, that I felt that way. This was a Catholic church, after all – who was I to demand beautiful architecture and such? Shouldn’t I be able to feel inspired even in a bland environment?

Around this time, I’d gone back to drinking. Things got really bad really fast. At some point I just gave up going to Mass. I got really into reading secular philosophy, for a good part of that year; I read Sartre and Camus and stuff like that, as well as some more contemporary works like “The View from Nowhere.” I kept trying and failing to stop drinking – sober for a day, three days, five days or so at a time, then right back to it. Life was not what I wanted it to be.

Needless to say, I became incredibly depressed. I almost ruined my marriage. Pretty soon I was reading “The Final Exit” and basically ready to call it quits.

Chapter 7: Coming Back

I wish I could say that prayer, or relying on God, pulled me back from the brink; but in reality, it was my husband. He gave me an ultimatum about my drinking. I decided that, fine, I would dry up for a year – one year – and see what happened. If life still sucked after a year I’d go back to drinking and self-destruct.

Not even three months later, I found out I was finally expecting our first child.

As a new mom, my interest in the faith was renewed. We moved again, and I found a new church, and started attending again. I knew that I wanted my child to grow up in the faith, and that meant being a good role model.

But I was so preoccupied. And still, at this new church, I had a hard time getting my feet on the ground. It didn’t really inspire me or motivate me; we were, once again, pretty much the only people under 50. And then COVID happened, and we took a break from Mass because we were exempt; then I had another pregnancy, a more complicated one. We didn’t start attending regularly again until after #2 was a few months old.

I guess it was around this time that I was starting to get more passionate about the faith, to look into it on my own.

Chapter 8: Interest In Tradition

The more you learn about Catholicism, the more you are drawn to the old Church, the Tradition of the Church. Because that’s where the real Catholicism is.

Through my own idle research, I began to become aware of the dichotomy between “trads” and “modernists” in the faith. I hadn’t been aware of this before. I learned that Trads did things like: wear a veil in church, pray in Latin, and actually follow all the rules and social teachings, whereas modernists were, basically, more loosey-goosey, more likely to be liberal or to pick and choose which parts of Catholicism they liked (as I had been doing previously). For the first time, I developed an interest in living like a Catholic. I started to think about things like modesty and chastity, purgatory and hell and the importance of guarding my tongue – things I had never been taught about, in my formation in the modern Church. I had to teach myself! And I tried, because I wanted to pass on the true faith to my kids.

(Also, around this time was when I gradually became extremely pro-life. Having opened my mind to the Church social teachings, and begun to see the logic and reasoning, plus, having now been through two pregnancies and one miscarriage, I was positively heated about the abortion issue, and remain so to this day.)

Maybe I’d fit in better at a more traditional church? But there was no trad community around me that I was aware of. So I felt kind of isolated at my modern parish, as I began to question things like: is it really okay to stand and receive Communion in my hand? Why was I taught to do that, if centuries of Catholic teaching pre-1968 forbade it? I at last began to develop a sense of what was traditional and what was modern, and began to understand why I’d always felt so ungrounded and uninspired by the modern Church. It wasn’t my fault, after all! I felt validated. My intuition had been right all along. The solemnity, sanity, structure, and seriousness that I craved were still out there, enjoyed by some trads who were lucky enough to live near a TLM.

But, there was no TLM around me; or so I thought.

Chapter 9: Fence-Sitting

And then I met a friend. I met her online, and we became pen-pals. I related to her a lot, plus she was Catholic like me – except, better. She spoke about spiritual things with an insight and wisdom, a clear-headedness, that I’d never encountered before. It seemed to be really working for her. I’d mention all kinds of spiritual questions and concerns that nagged at me, and she always had the most commonsense, realistic, quietly brilliant responses to all of them. I got such a sense of peace, reading her angle on religious matters, and felt eager to hear much, much more. Where on earth was she learning these things! I had to know.

Turned out, she attends a Mass of the SSPX.

I was only vaguely familiar with the Society. Weren’t they schismatic, or canonically irregular, or whatever? Weren’t we not supposed to go there? Yet, out of curiosity, I looked it up to see if they had a chapel near me – and they did! A fairly large one! Not even an hour away! So now, I was torn.

For about nine months, I waffled. I scoured the internet. I grilled my friend about her reasoning, her rationale for “disobeying” the Church and attending outside of “full communion with Rome.” I reconnected with an old friend from the Campus Ministry Group, a very smart and devout person who was also trad-leaning, and bounced a million ideas off of him, too. I agonized over this the same way I’d agonized over the gay marriage issue. I lost a lot of sleep. I prayed for clarity.

It was a hugely important decision: my family’s eternal salvation was on the line. The SSPX was certainly more serious, from what I’d seen, about helping people get to heaven. They actually talked about things like hell and sin! But, on the other hand, wouldn’t joining them constitute breaking from the One True Church, outside of which there can be no salvation? Was I, after all, being a cafeteria Catholic by trying to decide what I thought the Church ought to look like? Or, was the Society correct about what was going on in the world? Was I being emotional, or was my intuition drawing me towards the truth?

There were strong arguments in both directions. I didn’t know what to do.

At a standstill, logically, I finally realized I needed some new, empirical evidence to work with in making my decision. I decided to just give it a try. I bought a mantilla and a Missal and went to their chapel and attended my first TLM.

It was beautiful and moving – but, honestly, more confusing and stressful than anything else. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like an idiot, like everyone was staring at me and judging me. My AvPD really flared up. It was quite unpleasant.

So, I was torn. Mass at my local neighborhood NO was easier, I was comfortable there…

But, chasing comfort will get you nowhere but rock bottom, as I’d learned. Comfort should not be the deciding factor in choosing a church.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been too afraid to go for things that I thought were cool. Passivity has always been my defining characteristic. If I liked someone, or thought they were cool, I’d just admire them from afar and daydream about being the kind of person they’d like. Every friend and boyfriend I ever had approached me first. I always dodge, take the easier way, stay in my comfort zone to avoid humiliation. Here, I saw, was an opportunity to finally be brave and go for the thing that I sure as hell did not deserve to be a part of, but wanted really badly to be a part of.

So, I persisted in trying the TLM, and continued to embarrass myself doing so. Maybe God thought I needed to be humbled? All I knew was, I saw that there was something really special and holy going on there.

But still I waffled. I went back and forth: I’d go to my local NO for a few weeks, then back to the SSPX, then back to NO (which annoyed me more and more each time I went back to it, with its drivelly music, altar girls, feel-good homilies, college kids with leggings and Starbucks cups, noisy irreverent chit-chat before the Sacrament, and people wearing jeans and spaghetti straps), and I began to realize some things.

Chapter 10: Committed Radtrad

It finally began to sink in that:

1, the warmth and kindness at the SSPX chapel was much more real and genuine. People there were less in-your-face about it – at the NO, you’d always encounter this overly familiar, “Hiiii, welcome!!! 🥰🤗” flavor of Committee-enforced kindness, peppered in amongst a crowd of blank-faced strangers who were just there to do their thing, did not care a whit about you and did not even look your way once: an awkward contrast, a very fakey feeling. Whereas at SSPX, every person there would look me in the eye and wish me good morning, or initiate a polite conversation, and remember my name the next time. (Part of why it is so much more socially uncomfortable, for someone like me: no more just disappearing into the crowd.) I got a sense of a very real goodness, a very sincere desire to welcome the newcomer. It felt like an actual community.

2, There was real faith, at the SSPX. No one there was just there because it was part of their routine, it was what they’d always done. You can see in their every gesture that they mean it with all their heart, that this is life or death for them. It’s not just a social outing. This was deathly serious! This was real religion, the real thing I’d always wanted, not just a watered down modern rendition of it.

3, The priests there really cared about us. A couple of times, I reached out to priests via email or in person, and each time, these very busy, very holy men would positively bend over backwards to listen to me, to help me, to make time for whatever I needed. In the NO, I met plenty of very holy and very good priests, but I could just tell that this was a different breed of priest from the way they attended to my every question and concern with seriousness and devotion. I could 100% tell that he was not just being social and polite; he felt deeply called to help my soul attain salvation, and it came through in every interaction. He even spoke like a different breed of person – like someone not of this world. I experienced this fatherly love and holiness in Confession, too, to an even greater degree. These priests are not like other people; you can really tell that they are not just ordinary guys wearing cassocks; they truly have a supernatural vocation. I’ve found that I trust their advice completely, whereas in the NO I almost always left confession feeling like I wasn’t really heard, I wasn’t really recognized, or they didn’t really care.

4, The “not in full communion with Rome” thing is a myth, perpetuated by tradition-haters to try and keep people from experiencing the fullness of the faith. The SSPX is not disobedient to the Pope, nor are they outside of the Roman Church. It’s absurd to think otherwise, and I’m not going to bother enumerating all the reasons why; there are plenty of books and websites on this topic if you’re interested. Don’t fall for the slander and lies.

5, the NO world is completely wrong about the SSPX, and Lefebvre was completely right and will surely be canonized one day for singlehandedly saving Tradition; the fullness of the Church is found in the SSPX. It didn’t take long for me to see the light, and after just a few weeks of commitment, I began to realize how pathetically laughable it was that I spent so much time waffling. If you are on the fence, like I was, I urge you to just try it – just visit a SSPX Mass a few times, and see this difference for yourself. I now see how absolutely tragic it is that the modern Church makes the Society into these outcasts, pariahs, like they’re some kind of weird taboo cult, not even to be mentioned in polite company – when in reality, they have the fullness of the Catholic Faith.

I’m still the village idiot, at the TLM. I’m still trying to figure out my way around it. I still embarrass myself on the regular. And as you can see if you read my blog, I’m far from a model Catholic, lol. But, it’s worth it; it’s better to be awkward at the TLM than to be too comfortable at the NO.

Things are falling into place. I can’t even begin to list all the things that have started to make more sense, since finding Tradition – both in my personal life and liturgical life. I at last have found it: the real religion that my soul was always hungry for. Here, there is sanity, and stability, and safety.

Perhaps the most personally life-changing thing (aside from more perfect Sacraments, obviously) that I’ve realized since switching to Tradition is that – and this is gonna sound extremely cheesy – it’s actually okay for me to be my weird misfit self. Which is part of the reason I even started this stupid blog in the first place. In the modern Church, which is so preoccupied by liberation theology and social work and thinks everyone is basically the same as a priest, I felt like I could never actually be a good Catholic, unless I found a way to completely change my personality. Unless I miraculously transformed into someone else, some extrovert who could go around like a missionary, confidently teaching the faith to others, I wasn’t fulfilling my calling. In Tradition, I realized that lay people are not priests. It’s okay to be a lay person concerned with lay things. God made me an introvert, and weird, and it’s okay to be that way. There is much more humility in this take.

That, and learning that I can trust my intuition as much as my faculty of reason. I felt lost and confused in the modern Church not because I was doing a bad job, but because the modern Church is lost and confused herself! Several experiences along this path showed me that my “gut” was actually right, and I should have learned to trust it earlier.

I’m so grateful that I met that friend and that, after 10+ years as a Catholic, I finally found real Catholicism – the true religion, the kind of religion I always craved and needed in my life. So yes, go ahead and call me a radical traditionalist and an extremist; if that is what the priests of the SSPX are, then I am honored to be in that company.

Tl;dr: This is a personal account, not an argument. Having grown up in a world where there was no fundamental meaning to anything and “anything goes as long as you don’t hurt anyone,” I always felt something was lacking, and craved some kind of structure and meaning. In my 20s, I was drawn to the beauty of Catholicism, but struggled with the social teachings (LGBTQ rights, abortion, premarital sex, etc.). So I sampled several flavors of Protestantism, but found them all unsatisfying and hollow in comparison, and so eventually surrendered, learned to open my mind and approach these issues logically rather than emotionally, and see things from a new angle. However, as much as I loved Catholicism in theory, and had seen that she was the path to Truth, I failed to thrive in the modern Church, because it all felt watery somehow, basically the same as Protestantism. Like the theory did not line up with my lived experience. I couldn’t tell exactly why I felt that way. I worried that something was wrong with me that I couldn’t “click” with my religion like I wanted to; I felt I had no place there, and life got worse. Eventually I discovered that Traditionalist Catholicism was a thing that actively existed. But the modern Church says that Traditionalism is a no-no; so, what to do? After about a year of waffling, I learned to trust my intuition and be brave and finally found my way to the true religion that I had been craving since childhood.

Full Story:

Not that I’m any great example of the faith. Nor do my niche weirdness and bad attitude at all represent traditional Catholicism as a whole. But, as poor of a Catholic as I am, I have found that the radtrads are actually right. So, I’m on their team now (the worst player on the team, but still). I love hearing other people’s conversion stories, so here is mine.

Heads up: this is not a research paper or a dissertation. I’m not going to explain what Traditionalists believe, nor go into all the arguments in favor. All of this is available for free online if you care to look. I’m literally just sharing my silly little personal experience.

Chapter 1: Sordid Youth

My family of origin was liberal and atheist. We did not go to church. My Dad, in fact, was given to frequently complaining about the stupidity of Christians. We were a family of smart people, intellectuals. My Mom had a Darwin fish on the back of her van. Just do no harm and be a good person. It’s not that hard! That was the philosophy I grew up with.

Religion, I knew from an early age, was dumb. And yet, there was a part of me that envied my friends that went to church with their families. It was like they had somewhere to belong, something to be a part of: a culture. It also seemed like such a normal, wholesome family thing to do: church on Sunday mornings. As early as age five, I was fascinated by “normal” families.

Occasionally I’d go to church with the family of a friend. Most notably, I attended a five-day summer day camp for “Vacation Bible School” with my bestie who was Mennonite. That was really fun. I remember the theme of it that summer was “jungle” or “rainforest” or something like that. I just remember fun decorations, painting toy frogs, and having fun hanging out with my friend. I had also in the past attended a LDS church with a different friend, and a Catholic Mass with yet another friend and her dad. The Mass, which was in an ultramodern, roundish, gray-carpeted space, did not make an impression. That was all of my early experiences with religion.

I also remember staying in a hotel once and finding one of those Bibles in the drawer, and opening it to random pages and reading what was in it. It seemed like it was all weird random stuff about angels with a million eyeballs in weird places. I didn’t get what the big deal was.

The only really cool and noteworthy thing that happened, in a religious sense, before age 20, was when I went with my family to Ireland when I seventeen, and we visited St. Kevin’s monastic site at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow. (Would return there three more times over the next ten years.) It made quite an impression. I still hated Christianity, but a part of me found St. Kevin really relatable, and thought I might be able to get on board with whatever belief system inspired him to found this place.

But overall I just survived the first 20+ years of my life as a godless little heathen, just living by this “do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else” policy, and thinking Christians were all exceptionally stupid, often commenting things like “wow, so-and-so is so smart, I don’t understand, how the heck are they a Christian? Like, what went wrong?!”

2. What Went Wrong

I’d say I started realizing I needed a religion when I was a junior in college, living alone, and really miserable in my struggle with eating and drinking. I remember sitting there alone in my apartment thinking, “if I had, like, a higher power, something to worship besides my ED, something else to give me some rules to live by…”

Around this time I was taking a really cool elective course on Judaism, and holding down a work study job at a kosher bagel shop in the campus Hillel House (which was awesome; dietary laws fascinate me), and vaguely toying with the idea of becoming Jewish. But a couple things bothered me about Judaism: it was basically genetic — you were either a member of the chosen race, or you weren’t, and I didn’t see how conversion could change that; and also, they didn’t really have an answer to the whole death problem.

I’d also taken a Philosophy course on Søren Kierkegaard. I’d thought it would be edgy and cool to learn about the Father of Existentialism; I had not expected to gain a new respect for Christian philosophy. I particularly remember studying SK’s writings on Abraham, the “hero of faith,” and that made a pretty huge impression on my psyche, and was the first time I thought the Bible seemed to contain something profound, even incomprehensibly deep.

And then there was that ethics class I’ve written about before – the one where I began to question the basis of my whole understanding of morality. Notably, there was one kid in that class who was more confident in his beliefs and more articulate than anyone else in the class, who alone seemed unshaken by any of the moral problems posed to us in the coursework: a very conservative young man, a Roman Catholic.

All of this was still just bumping around in my skull like meteorites in space at the point when I dropped out of college. I took almost a year off to dick around, then applied to a new school, where I thought I’d be happier, to finish out my degree.

Spoiler alert, changing geographical locations did not solve my problems or make me happier! I was still sad and screwed up. But now, I was sad and screwed up just a few blocks away from one of the most beautiful old cathedrals in this part of the US. I’d been toying with the idea of trying to visit a church for a few weeks. I longed for a secure foundation, someplace where I could belong and find solace. Knowing next to nothing about any of the denominations of Christianity or what made them different, I decided to just wander into the place with the coolest vibes.

It’s undisputed fact that Catholics have the coolest vibes.

I don’t really remember the Mass. It didn’t make a huge impression. I just remember the kind young priest who spoke to me on the stairs outside when it was over. He helped me connect with the local Catholic campus ministry group.

There, I met some of the best people I’ve ever known. They took me under their wings and did everything they could to help me. I learned more and more about the Church, and saw how perfectly logical and rational and beautiful her teachings actually were.

Chapter 3: Cold Feet

Several months into the inquiry process, my RCIA course officially began. However, I started to get cold feet. I was still very liberal: pro-choice and pro-gay marriage and such. And I believed I was right about those issues (I was, at the time, especially heated about LGBTQ rights), and could simply not get on board with a church that professed otherwise. (To my credit, I guess it was a better move to be honest and just leave Catholicism, than it would have been to go ahead and join and become a “cafeteria Catholic.”) I was really sad about it, but did what I thought was best. I wracked my brain day in and day out about all the reasons why my decision was justified. On my blog at the time (MiTHology 2.0, as you may remember), I, a 22-year-old kid who had only been casually inquiring into Catholicism on my laptop for a few months, made post after post “explaining” why the Church was wrong about these issues (LOL).

I mulled it over and mulled it over, and eventually went with the Episcopal Church. There was a really lovely Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church in that city, where I could get all the cool Catholic vibes (kneeling at the communion rail, incense, Mary statues and Stations on the walls, sung vespers every evening, etc.) with none of the difficult social teachings. I was Baptized there Easter morning, taking the name of Saint Kevin as my patron saint, and confirmed a few weeks later when the Bishop came to town. I was still pretty bothered about Catholicism – it was, for me, like the ex that you can’t stop thinking about, that you bitch and complain about to everyone you know so it’s clear you’re still obsessed – but, the church I’d found was working well enough for me.

But that November I graduated, and moved back to my hometown. There, there was no Anglo-Catholic Episcopal church. There were three or four different Episcopal churches, and I tried them all out; they were each extremely different, and I didn’t love any of them, but committed to one anyway (because, for lack of a more compelling reason, it had the prettiest location). I attended there for probably almost a year, but I felt ungrounded – like the foundation was gone from beneath my feet – and I was still bitter and obsessive about Catholicism, scribbling away about it by night.

I even looked into some different Protestant churches. A couple Lutheran churches, Methodists, et cetera. Nothing filled me with awe; nothing felt like the real thing.

Chapter 4: Coming Home

Eventually I guess I gave up the fight. Episcopalianism just wasn’t doing it for me. It felt, to me, like trying to subsist on watered-down porridge. Everything felt two-dimensional. I was tired, I was sad. I wanted to be Catholic, I finally admitted. But I couldn’t in good conscience join them unless I could make some kind of peace with their social teachings.

So I decided to just open my mind. To just try. To just try and see things from a different angle than I always had – to actually try and listen to what they were saying, instead of reacting emotionally. I gave up the fight, basically, and decided to just admit that it was possible that maybe the 2,000+ year old Church understood a few things that my 24-year old self did not.

Meanwhile, I began attending a Catholic parish near my home. The Mass was very modern – the Protestantish music, the acoustic guitar, the rambling, conversational, feel-good homilies – which I didn’t love; but, it was Catholic. The priest was kind, and the other parishioners were lovely, although I was pretty much the only person there under age 50. I promptly started RCIA and was received into the Church some months later, in late November, on what the modern Church observes as the Feast of Christ the King. By this point, I still didn’t love the Church’s social teachings, but I was at least able to see the logic of why they taught what they did.

Chapter 5: The Search Continues

As soon as I became Catholic, my life started to change for the better. In retrospect, it is pretty cool and fascinating to see. About a month and a half after my reception, I ended the problematic relationship(s) that I was in at the time, and finally started trying to get sober. It was a good year; I felt helped by God; I was on what they call in AA the “pink cloud” of early sobriety. I started a new relationship, and promptly moved in together with the guy, because no one in my church had ever told me that wasn’t okay; I mean, it was just the normal thing to do, and it wasn’t like anyone actually lived by the “old” Catholic rules anymore, apparently. Except maybe a few weird extremists out there, and those folks needed to chill. I was a basically good person, and in a monogamous relationship, and that was the most important thing!

But then one day I went to confession with a different priest than the super-chill one that I normally went to. During my confession I mentioned something about being “at home with my boyfriend,” and the priest, in the kindest and gentlest terms, explained that he could not absolve me as I was still living in a state of sin.

And I was like: “😮🤯 You mean, people actually still follow those archaic rules? They still apply?!” No one had ever told me! I was floored – and honestly, on some deep level, relieved, and happy – it was like my feet had found some solid ground to stand on, an actual structure to support me. My then-bf and I promptly amended our living situation, not fully cohabitating again until after we were married, about a year later.

That was when I first began to develop an interest in living more traditionally. But, still, it was just a vague idea, floating around in my head, lost in a stew of anxiety.

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