Tag: catholic

Hoping mechanisms: how to persist in light of the fewness of the saved

March 2nd, 2026

Well, this is it: this is THE Question That Keeps Me Up At Night. After this one, I may as well just shut this whole column down. It’s the question to literally end all questions. How many of us will actually make it to Heaven?

In case you’re new here, I’m a Catholic — certainly not an exemplary one though. I’ve been Catholic going on twelve years, and about a year and a half ago I became Traditionalist.

The fewness of the saved is something I never heard about before becoming Trad. It’s not really talked about in the modern Church. You can see why they don’t want to talk about it. It’s a scary thought, the scariest thought that there is. Human language cannot accurately describe how scary of a thought it is. I don’t even like to talk about it — in fact, as I write this, I have to keep pausing to write other things to keep my focus divided, because I simply can’t get too immersed in this topic. So it’s probably gonna take a while to finish. Which is why I’m only just now getting around to writing this post, even though it’s my #1 Question That Keeps Me Up At Night, and I’ve been writing these stupid little QTKMUANs for over a year now.

So why now, you ask? Why am I writing about this now? For the simple reason that YouTube randomly brought it up with me again. I.e., the channel Sensus Fidelium, which I subscribe to and you should too, just posted a sermon on this topic within the last day or so. So it popped up on my feed, and all it took was me seeing the title on my screen for that horrible sinking feeling to come over me once again. Threatening to pull me under.

Luckily, I think I’ve figured out how to cope.

The first time though, it really dealt me a blow. The first time I learned about the fewness of the saved was around the time that I became Trad. I’d heard that this was something Trads believed in, so I looked it up. And I found, lo and behold, a sermon on YouTube.

I can’t find the exact video again, but there are a ton of similar ones on YouTube (topic: fewness of the saved, sermon by St. Leonard of Port Maurice; listen at your own risk). The one that I watched, it literally opened with “beware, do not listen to the following if you’re already really worried about hell” — so, I shoulda just turned it off then and there, but I was curious. And then, after listening, for like two and a half days, I lost the ability to really function. I just kinda sat there staring into space. No point weeping. No point doing anything.

Because here’s the tl;dr: we all already know that few are saved — the narrow gate, and all — but apparently, it’s way fewer than you even thought! According to some saints, less than one percent of practicing Catholics will make it to Heaven. Way less. (Not to mention 100% of all non-Catholics, which in this scenario just goes without saying.) This sermon cited saints’ visions of like a hundred thousand souls all going before the Judgment Seat, and out of all these, only five even make it into purgatory. All the rest are damned. This information may not be an approved dogma of the Church, but it was taught by canonized saints and Doctors of the Church, and it’s certainly not disapproved.

Hearing this, I was like: well, F. Because let’s face it. I’m far from one of the best Catholics I know. I ran the math: my hometown has a population of 79,000. If only five in 100,000 even have a shot at salvation, then that means maybe only three people in my whole city will be saved. But wait, I thought, my heartbeat starting to race. I have a husband and four kids. And I can easily name many people in my city who are holier than me and my family. I know way more than three people in my area who are sincere and devout and say their rosary every day.

It felt hopeless. It felt very convincing and very hopeless. If my chances are that slim, I thought, then why even bother? At this point I may as well give up. Just quit trying to be better, just eat drink and be merry while I still can, because after this nothing but suffering for all eternity awaits me. I.e.: it led me to despair.

But wait. Isn’t despairing of God’s mercy a sin against the First Commandment? I wrote about this a bit in a recent post. Hope is a virtue. We need to have hope. So maybe watching this video even though I knew it might lead me to despair was actually me failing to avoid a near occasion of sin. Maybe I should stop dwelling on it and go to confession. Maybe I should abandon this post.

But… is it true though? Most members of my religious community seem to think so. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus — yes, I do believe that: outside of the Church, there is no salvation. I accepted that a long time ago.

However I also believe (and keep in mind here, I am not an expert nor a theologian, and these opinions are my own) that this doesn’t necessarily mean that no non-Catholics ever go to Heaven. All salvation comes through the Catholic Church; maybe that means that, sometimes, through the prayers and sacrifices of faithful Catholics, even some non-Catholics have a chance. And obviously if they are in Heaven they are Catholic now. I don’t know; this is just what I like to think.

Because I obviously believe that God continues to purify our souls after death. Our journey does not just abruptly end when we die. Knowing that to be true, then wouldn’t it make sense for Purgatory to be a very crowded place? I can’t help but feel like that must be where most of us end up after we die. I’d personally feel much more satisfied, and find it much more believable, if it were phrased to me this way: that, out of 100,000 practicing Catholics, only five walk straight into Heaven, and the other 999,995 have at least a decent shot at getting into Purgatory. That seems fair to me.

But maybe that’s just wishful thinking. It’s not about what Mith thinks is fair, after all. I’m not the judge.

And of course, we don’t want to presume God’s mercy. That’s a sin as well. “Oh, it’s okay, I don’t have to work on myself now, I’ll just do some extra time in Purgatory for it lol” — no, we mustn’t think like this. If we don’t do our best, then sure, we do deserve hell. Are most of us doing our best? — who’s to really say? We might have convinced ourselves that we are doing our best — but we’re not the judge. God knows us and our motivations and intentions better than we do.

So I really can’t “disprove” the extreme fewness of the saved, and I’m not here to do that, however badly I wish I could. I can’t argue against it, and I won’t do that, because whenever I see folks online doing that, it just strikes me as desperate, pitiful attempts to cope. Stamping their little feet going “no! it’s not fair!”, like toddlers. Oh believe me, I get it. I understand needing to cope, because this knowledge is literally impossible to live with. But burying our heads in the sand is probably not the best way to do that.

“But I just don’t believe it, Mith. I just don’t feel that it’s true, that most people burn in hell. That just doesn’t line up with my perception of a loving God.” Are you really gonna gamble your eternal soul on what you “feel like”? Do you really trust your own little perceptions that much? We’re so small. We’re all products of our time and environment, and this concept of a warm-and-fuzzy, lovey-dovey God who just wants you to be a good person, is a pretty recent trend. I’m not willing to risk it all for a trend. God’s perspective is very different from ours. We tend to think He sees things our way. Reading the Old Testament is a real eye opener in that regard.

I can’t argue with Saint Leonard of Port Maurice or any of the great saints who professed the fewness of the saved (there were many, even St. Thomas Aquinas himself). So, what can I do?

How do we cope??

I could complain about it — although that’s probably sinful, to resent God’s justice.

I guess the only thing I can do, is the very thing I was just talking about last week: hope.

I can hope that more than 5/100,000 go to heaven. I can hope that it’s much more than that. And that the non-Catholics that I love have a chance. To get a bit more crazy and extreme with it, I can even go so far as to hope that my sorry little pathetic self has a chance! Hope, radical hope, is a virtue, after all.

But hoping doesn’t mean ignoring the strong likelihood that only extremely few really are saved.

What I’ve figured out for myself is, you have to master the art of living with this information in your peripheral, but not looking squarely at it, at least not for too long. You have to do your absolute best to live as if it is true, but hope against hope that it’s not.

And, you have to be devoted to the Blessed Mother. I’ve heard of personal accounts from people who had near-death experiences, telling how they came before the Judgment Seat and just knew that they deserved hell — that, in light of God’s unfathomable goodness, it was only fair, really; they didn’t even argue. But who should come and intercede on their behalf but our beautiful, gentle Mother. She always has mercy, and Jesus loves her so much that He will do what she asks of Him. She can save even the most hardened sinners. And never was it known that anyone who fled to her protection was left unaided!

I was reading a book recently in which the author reminded us that, each time we pray the rosary, we ask Mary to pray for us at the hour of our death 53 times. If we pray it daily, that’s 19,345 times a year. I’m 36; let’s say I live another 30 years. If I don’t miss a day, that’s 580,350 times — not counting all the rosaries I’ve already prayed up to this day! Surely my loving Mother cannot ignore that, right? Isn’t that some slightly reassuring math?

But… don’t so many Catholics say their rosary every day? Pretty much all of us? How do we reconcile that with how few of us allegedly go to heaven?

Maybe we think we’re praying with sincerity, but like I said we don’t really know ourselves as well as God does, do we?

I guess the last coping mechanism I’ve landed on and that I’ll share with you here is, we must keep in mind that God is good. His will is perfectly good. If He lets us go to hell, then that is for the best. If I end up in hell, I guess I’ll at least know, while I’m burning, that it’s because God is good and all is as it should be. That all is right with the world. I don’t guess that would console me at all, since there is no consolation in hell. But, it’s something. It allows me to persist.

And of course, the goodness of God also inspires hope.

So in conclusion, hope not only serves as an antidote to despair, but also allows us to cheerfully go about our business here on earth, doing our little jobs and raising our little families and posting on our stupid little blogs, even while knowing that all but like 1/20,000 of us are most likely going to burn in hell for all eternity.

So, let’s hope, readers! If you’re reading this, I’ve said a Hail Mary for you; maybe you can say one for me as well.
Sobriety, sanctity, & St. Mark Ji Tianxiang

February 22nd, 2026

Ever since I first stumbled upon the story of the nineteenth-century Chinese martyr Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang, a month or so ago, I’ve been unable to get him off my mind.

Not only because he’s the patron saint of addicts & those in recovery, so a patron of mine automatically, and because his feast day, July 9, happens to be a very personally significant day for me (some sources say his feast day is July 7, but it’s officially July 9; he died on the 7th, but is celebrated in the new Roman liturgical calendar with his fellow Martyrs of China on the 9th), which is of course just a coincidence and nothing particularly meaningful in and of itself, but still grabs my attention… but also, because his life story, which is unlike that of any other saint I’m familiar with, shines some real light on a nagging Question That Keeps Me Up At Night (and has done so for years).

You can read about his life story here, but the tl;dr is: St. Mark was an opium addict who was never able to quit. He struggled for 30 years to get clean, and at the time of his death was still actively addicted. Because he was unable to stop, even while fighting valiantly against it by frequenting Mass and Confession, his priest denied him absolution and Communion, seeing as how he didn’t seem to have a firm purpose of amendment. So St. Mark lived without the Sacraments for 30 years. But he didn’t give up his faith. He died a martyr during the Boxer Rebellion, executed for refusing to apostasize.

And he’s a saint. Canonized by Pope St. John Paul II the Great in the year 2000. A canonized saint who died actively addicted, and hadn’t even been able to receive the sacraments!

Reading this kinda flipped my whole understanding of everything on its head.

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“But for the Grace of God” & “One Day at a Time”

How does any addict get and stay clean/sober? I’m almost seven years sober myself. I don’t go to meetings anymore, but early on I went to a ton of them, and became quite fluent in AA. And one thing that I always heard at their meetings was the slogan: “but for the Grace of God, there go I”, meaning: when we see someone relapse, we must know that we too are vulnerable; no one is ever safe from slipping. We mustn’t trust in our own strength.

Only the Grace of God keeps us sober — only one day at a time. I heard that over and over and over, and tbh it always annoyed me a bit and I never understood it.

Because what do you mean it’s God keeping me sober? If that were true, wouldn’t it be easy — wouldn’t it feel like the work was being done for me? Instead of me working so hard to do it myself? Avoiding booze was hugely difficult, early on. It was strenuous. It would have been nice to feel like Someone Else was taking care of it for me, but it didn’t feel like that.

Only one day at a time: I kind of understood this then. Early on, it makes more sense to focus on twenty-four hours (or even the next hour, or half-hour, or five minutes…). If you try and think about staying sober forever, it’s way too daunting. But the next five minutes, I can do. The next twenty-four hours, maybe I can do.

But “one day at a time” begins to mean more than that, almost seven years in. Around the 3-5 year mark, I felt pretty invulnerable: “I’ve got this! I’ve figured it out. Welcome to the big numbers! I’m free! I really don’t need alcohol any more.” — But then, sometimes, I realize how easy it would be. I think about going back, and I know I’m still the same person, or even worse. A slight inconvenience and I’m thinking how nice it would be, all the sensations of the old routine. What’s stopping me? It’s like the feeling of standing on a very tall building looking over the edge. You could just do it. Nothing’s stopping you.

But for the Grace of God.

I think I begin to understand now, how it’s only grace that keeps us sober. People in AA talk about willingness — it’s another one of their keywords, along with humility, service, surrender, etc. Willingness is, obviously, crucial. You have to be willing to not pick up the drink. (Easier said than done.)

And from where do we get this magical thing, this Willingness? How do we find it? Some of us never do.

The thing is, I think only God can give you willingness. Not just to stay sober, but to do anything at all. People always applaud themselves for accomplishing hard things, for their motivation and drive and energy; but where did they get those attributes from? Everything that we think we worked for, is really a gift. That doesn’t make doing the work easy. It just makes it possible.

This is something I’ve only begun to get my head around in the last year and a half or so. Everything that we have really is from God. As with those other slogans, like “but for the Grace of God,” I used to hear this said, and frown, and not really understand it. Why do you say I can’t do anything without God? Like, sure, my life is a gift from Him, and my health is a gift from Him, but what I do with those are all me, right? I get out of bed in the morning and do my work. That’s no miracle. Because even if I don’t pray or ask God to help me accomplish my tasks, the tasks still get accomplished. Isn’t that me? Didn’t I do that?

I see now how silly it was of me to think that I was anything at all, that I could do anything at all, without God! That’d be like a single blood cell — nay, a single atom — a single subatomic particle! — thinking that it had any capability of accomplishing any real task on its own, independently of the human body.

All of our capabilities and dispositions, everything that makes up our soul and our consciousness (with the exception of sin, which God allows to exist even though He doesn’t like it) — all of this is from God. “God comes to you disguised as your life,” someone quoted. So, if we have the willingness to not drink: that is from God.

And when someone who is addicted to alcohol or some other substance, who is entrenched in that sin, is, through no merit of their own, granted the willingness to not commit that sin anymore — well of course that’s miraculous.

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“It works if you work it” & God’s mercy

Which brings me back to St. Mark Ji Tianxiang.

Addiction is a bottomless pit, a fast track to hell. It’s a black hole. That’s how powerful it is. And whether we as addicts have the willingness to stop indulging is, basically, outside of our control. If we have the willingness, we can nurture it and try to make it fruitful. If we don’t have willingness yet, we can try, in different ways, to acquire it: by making ourselves open to grace. Maybe that’s by prayer or the Sacraments or going to meetings or meditation or whatever it is that you do. We should certainly keep doing all of that, persistently. And if you don’t even try, then that’s your fault. But whether God chooses to grant willingness is entirely up to Him. We can’t understand why He grants it to some and not to others — why some have to suffer so much or even die, and why others make it out relatively unscathed. Sometimes it seems unfair. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

During his life, St. Mark did the right things. He fought courageously against the addiction. God didn’t set him free from it, not while he was alive. But he never gave up.

And now he’s a canonized saint. I’m still trying to get my head around this.

Because in AA, if you keep relapsing, that’s on you. Oh don’t get me wrong, no one’s going to banish you from meetings, no matter how many times you relapse. Even if you never successfully dry up, as long as you have a desire to stop drinking, you’re welcome and eligible for membership (that’s the Third Tradition). (Notice that “desire” is different from “willingness.”) You’re still welcome, you’re still a member — but if you’re messing up, that’s on you, as any sponsor will tell you. And if you keep relapsing, your sponsor will probably even fire you because you’re “not doing the work.” Or they might say something like “I must not be the right sponsor for you.” This is basically what St. Mark Ji’s confessor told him: try harder. As the slogan goes,“it works if you work it.”

But wasn’t St. Mark “working it”? He was devout and sincere. He may not have had a literal 12 Step group around him (which some die-hard AA/NAs will probably say was the problem, the missing piece of the puzzle, for him) — but, imo, as someone who no longer goes to meetings, St. Mark was doing all the right things. The Twelve Steps are really just a secularized, simplified version of the Sacraments, after all.

“But maybe if he’d had the fellowship of other addicts…” yeah, fellowship is another of those AA keywords. I dunno, in my experience you can be drowning in Fellowship and still not have Willingness. But maybe that’s just me. I have AVPD so fellowship doesn’t really do much for me; it doesn’t penetrate my shell, but just kind of rolls off of me like water off of a painfully awkward duck. So, I dunno, I’m not really a believer in the absolute necessity of fellowship, when it comes to sobriety at least. I still think St. Mark could have stayed clean without it, if God had allowed him to.

But so why is it that in AA I was taught that, if I couldn’t stop drinking, it’s because I was doing something wrong — I wasn’t working hard enough? Doesn’t St. Mark’s story tell us the opposite?

Or does it?

We don’t have the details. All the stories say “he fought bravely,” “he kept coming to Mass,” “he prayed diligently,” et cetera… but maybe he wasn’t doing all that he could have. We don’t know! Maybe the lesson here isn’t just that we addicts are completely powerless, but that saints are not necessarily perfect people who get everything right. Sure a lot of them are. Look at St. Thérèse, who never committed a mortal sin in her life. I admit that the first time I read Story of a Soul, I had a hard time relating to her. (Thankfully I’ve grown since then.) But the life of St. Mark Ji paints a very different picture of sainthood. Maybe he could have tried harder. He was human, and a sinner. Maybe some saints really are sinners who never gave up.

Or maybe the big takeaway here is about God’s mercy. God can make anyone a saint — even an addict who couldn’t stay clean.

St. Mark’s story reminded me a lot of another story I’d heard. My late friend “J” (may he rest in peace) knew a lot about Eastern Orthodoxy, and had considered converting — and anyway, he told me about an Orthodox “saint” by the name of Paisios of Mount Athos (1924-1994). Even though he was Orthodox, and as such held some really problematic beliefs, he was a very holy man, and said a lot of amazing and inspiring things.

There’s this story about Paisios and an alcoholic monk who lived at the monastery and couldn’t stop drinking. Apparently, when the drunk monk finally died, all the other monks were like “thank God he’s gone, right?! What a nuisance! What a loser!” but Paisios defended the deceased one, telling the other monks about how he (the dead drunk) had developed an addiction because of his traumatic past, and had worked hard over the years to reduce his consumption just a little, and had been fighting a heroic battle that no one else knew anything about; and how, at his death, Paisios saw a whole battalion of angels come to collect his soul.

I like to think that this story is true.

We hear all the time how no one can enter Heaven with any scraps of worldliness still clinging to them. How you must be free of all attachment to even venial sin. Which at a glance seems contradictory to the story of this drunk monk, and of St. Mark Ji. It’s true that addiction reduces culpability, when it comes to sin. But still — that someone could pass straight from active addiction through the gates of Heaven — that’s wild to me. I have confused/complicated feelings about the whole Divine Mercy devotion, but dang: God’s mercy really must be as ridiculously huge and expansive as St. Faustina told us. It really gives you hope.

The virtue of hope

That’s the the other thing that St. Mark Ji’s story sheds light on for me: hope.

Apparently, as he was being led to his execution, alongside his family members, one of them asked him: where are we going? To which St. Mark replied, happily: We’re going home.

Imagine the confidence! To be so sure that, after living as an addict unable to even receive the Sacraments, you were going to walk right into Heaven.

I never understood before. Faith, hope, and charity, the three theological virtues. Secretly, I always thought to myself: yes, charity is clearly very important, and I can see that faith is too; but what’s the big deal with hope? Why is it such a sin to despair of God’s mercy? Isn’t that just being realistic?, I thought, considering how many people go to hell and how miserable of a sinner I am. I’m naturally a pessimist, and prefer to set my expectations low, so that I’m always either correct or pleasantly surprised. But apparently that’s not the right attitude to have when it comes to our religion. And tbh I never really understood why not.

St. Mark Ji shows us just how necessary it is to have hope in God. Hope was what kept him going for three decades without access to the sacraments. Even when he didn’t have those, which are the very foundation of our faith life, he still had hope. Hope against all odds — what a cool thing! And joy! To go to his martyrdom with joy and hope after a life that any worldly person would call “hopeless.” St. Mark shows us that hope is actually essential to sanctity. Somehow, no one before him has ever been able to get this through my thick little pessimistic skull.

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In conclusion

So after all, I’m not sure if the life of St. Mark Ji Tianxiang contradicts anything that I was taught in AA; on the contrary, I think it supplements those teachings — it teaches us things that a secular (because make no mistake, AA is secular, even though they make you accept a “Higher Power” your HP doesn’t have to be the One True God, it can literally be a doorknob if you’re so inclined), human-founded organization cannot: about the actual hugeness of God’s power and mercy, and the importance of hope in Him.

Which is why, imo, it’s best to have both. You should at least be a practicing Catholic, but if you’re really in the trenches with addictive behavior, a 12 step group sure can’t hurt either, as long as you don’t get too caught up in the secularism, and keep your eyes on the real Higher Power, as St. Mark did. What a cool saint, what an awesome witness, what a story.

St. Mark Ji Tianxiang, ora pro nobis.
Another stupid little layperson’s thoughts on the upcoming episcopal consecrations

February 19th, 2026

I hesitate to even post this, because the world really doesn’t need another uneducated layperson’s opinion, on matters of Church politics or anything else. There are too many stupid opinions out there, all day every day, and everyone seems to think that theirs matters. I’ve seen so many garbage opinions on this topic spouted all over social media lately, which is what prompted me to word-vomit this out in the first place. As a response. I should probably just keep my mouth shut. No one needs Mith to defend their cause, and I’m probably just an embarrassment to those I’m trying to defend: a fat little unkempt shih tzu trying to bark and growl like it thinks it’s a big fierce guard dog. And you just look at it like “is that even a dog?”

I hesitate also because of how incredibly unqualified I am to talk about such subjects. I’m not an expert by any means. I’m sure some of you actually-smart Catholic readers will see this and just laugh and go “yeah, you should’ve hesitated more.”

But, maybe it’ll reach someone who likes it.

When I was discerning all of this back in 2024, I scoured the internet for concise, dumbed-down answers to philosophical questions that I had, that made the answers digestible. I wasn’t looking for a million citations from lengthy, lofty Vatican documents that I didn’t particularly want to read. But, I also didn’t need another oversimplified “just obey Rome”-type message. I needed to actually understand the philosophy in a way that made sense, in a way that I could verbalize myself. I needed personalized answers for a simple but curious person.

So, the following shall be my response to the haters, and shall attempt to be the sort of post that I was looking for in 2024.

And maybe just maybe there are other people out there looking for similar content, now that the recent news has put the SSPX back in the spotlight and gotten everyone talking about them again.

And besides, this is my stupid little blog, and what else is it for if not for sharing my random unnecessary opinions.

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The news of the upcoming SSPX episcopal consecrations: everyone on Catholic Internet has been talking about it, so I guess I’ll go ahead and throw my opinion out there too.

Which, I must emphasize, will be just that: an opinion. Mith is not qualified to speak knowledgeably about things like canon law, Church politics, or the liturgy wars. I am not a commentator. I’m just a silly little layperson who’s not even a very good Catholic, not very well-read, and has only been attending the TLM for sixteen months. This post will simply contain my reaction, my little musings, my own little personal experience/ opinion/ feelings about the matter. If you’re looking for useful, objective information, please seek elsewhere.

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For me, it’s been funny and sad to see Catholic Internet all aboil with hatred toward the SSPX. All these voices suddenly crying out “schism! schism!!” and saying the most hateful, ignorant things, when they clearly haven’t done their research, nor paused to consider the issue from a logical angle, nor had a single second’s actual experience with the real-life SSPX.

If this had happened two to three years ago, I’d surely be all upset about it like all these other Catholics online. “How dare they!” “Disobedient!” “They think they’re more Catholic than the Pope!” Yes, I have been in their position before, making these same weak accusations – refusing to understand, refusing to think, because I’d been told I wasn’t allowed to.

Which is why I just kind of roll my eyes and sigh at such nonsense now.

In retrospect it’s truly embarrassing how much time I wasted waffling and fence-sitting. I wanted to go to the SSPX Mass, wanted to live a Traditional Catholic life, but I was afraid to, because of the way the modern Church treats Tradition. Like some sort of taboo. Don’t even mention it in polite company. Did you know they’ll ban you from r/Catholic if you dare to utter a single non-negative word about the Society?

“Any average Protestant on the street has a better shot at getting into Heaven than a Bishop of the SSPX,” someone Tweeted.

“They’re not Catholic,” someone told me, interrupting me mid-sentence when I dared to casually mention the nearby SSPX chapel in conversation.

And, when I broke the news to an acquaintance from my former, NO parish that I was defecting for the SSPX, she was horrified – literally aghast. “Do not trust them,” she urged me.

Normally I’m super impressionable – a real doormat. So you’d think that that interaction would have swayed me. But luckily, I’d already done my research, prayed about it relentlessly, and at last made up my mind, by that point.

Catholics are fed so much BS about the SSPX. And told not to question it. Shhh — don’t even talk about them! The mainstream Church literally treats Protestants and Orthodox as their “brothers in Christ” – but the SSPX? Who are fully Catholic, have apostolic succession, teach the fullness of the faith, and btw have the “official” faculties of confessions and marriages (which, how can you do those if you’re not a Catholic priest?!)? Oh no. We don’t talk about them.

It’s really a tragedy.

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Back when I was debating whether or not to go the SSPX way, I found that all my painstaking research and persistent prayer left me at an impasse. I could understand the argument from both sides; both presented compelling cases. It became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to logic my way out of this one. I needed some real-world experience.

So I went out on a very scary limb, figuring that, if it were a mistake, God would have mercy on me because the sense of being called there would not relent, and I was earnestly trying to discern His will – and visited.

I wish more people would do that. I wish more of these NOrmie Catholics would just take some time to talk to a SSPX Priest and ask him questions. To see what it’s actually like.

But, to be fair, they’re taught not to.

They think we’re all crazy, Pope-hating sedevacantists, over here at the SSPX chapels. They think we think we’re the only real Catholics. None of that is true. Actually, I’ve never heard a single word of hostility or vitriol or blame or even dislike from any of the Society priests about the NO world. On the contrary, they speak of the modern Church with genuine compassion and sorrow. With fatherly concern for a flock led astray. I can’t say the same for the Novus Ordites.

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I’m not going to go into all the reasons here why the SSPX is right about what they are doing. If you’re interested, you can do the research. But I’d advise reading about it from more than one angle. Don’t just read what the “popesplainers” (as they are humorously called) have to say. Listen to SSPX sermons, listen to their podcast. Think about it. You have to be able to think with your brain and not your emotions.

People are so angry. They make such assumptions about the mindset/thought process of those who support the Society.

But I think what’s really angering these haters, what’s really getting under their skin, is that they actually love Tradition. (How could you not?) They love what the SSPX is doing, and would love to go to their Masses and support them – but they just don’t feel like they can, because that’s what the NO world tells you – and so they get bitter. And it angers them when they see other people doing what they themselves wish they could do but are afraid to. So they start screaming “no! You’re not allowed to do that!”

It’s the exact same phenomenon as the one I pointed out in a recent post on a different topic: there’s a certain sect of working moms who love to hate on those stay-at-home moms who’ve chosen to sacrifice financial comfort in order to stay home with their kids. “Must be nice! To have the luxury!”, they snipe and gripe. “Stop telling the rest of us it’s okay to quit our jobs and stay home, because I simply can’t do it! I’d be too poor!” When in fact they could do it but simply don’t want to be a little uncomfortable, and so they’re mad at those women who prove that it can be done. It’s easier to get mad and tell yourself it’s impossible, than to do the hard thing.

Which is why these sacrificing stay-home moms live rent-free in these bitter working moms’ heads. The same way the SSPX lives rent-free in the heads of so many of these “blind obedience” NO Catholics. They’d love a return to Tradition – who wouldn’t! Most devout Catholics, no matter where they attend Mass, long to see the Church return to her former beauty and glory, and love the rigor of Tradition, and long for exactly what the SSPX offers. But they are deluded and believe they can’t go. And so they’re mad.

Which is why they’re out here spewing all this hateful content online right now. .

I’ll tell you a bit about my thought process, in case you’re interested. Keeping in mind that I’m not a historian, or an expert, or even that well-read, but just a slow little layperson who needs concepts dumbed down in very plain terms: these are some dumbed-down versions of the arguments that swayed me in favor of the SSPX.

Obedience is the big question here. What is meant by obedience? “As Catholics we must be obedient to Rome. That’s what unites us.” True.

But blind obedience is not the way. Yes, we must be obedient to Rome. But, just hypothetically now, what do you do if Rome becomes corrupted?

This was one of the things that finally swayed me, when I thought about it. How bad would it have to get? How much more modern and permissive would the modern Church have to get before I would say “okay, this isn’t right”?

Looking at the history, I saw the progression; I thought ahead to the future, centuries from now, when history books will probably tell of how, in the late 1900s-early 2000s, the Church endured a tragic crisis (foreseen by multiple saints), and it was only thanks to one brave Archbishop that the fullness of her teachings and liturgy were preserved. Which side of history would I want to be on? The side that just went along with it, or the minority that saw what was happening and did something about it, sooner rather than later? We all like to think we’d be the “good ones” in history: we’d be the abolitionists, the Underground Railroad custodians; we’d have sheltered Anne Frank. I decided to do something brave and trust my intuition – to try and land on what I believe is the right side of history. I saw all these other nice, normal families doing it, and that encouraged me. You can do it too. More and more of us are doing it.

“But Mith, roma locuta, causa finita est and all that!” I haven’t read all of the Archbishop’s writings, but I do know that he differentiated between physical, actual Rome and Eternal Rome. Which might strike you as absurd at first, as it did me, but think about it: you have to acknowledge the difference. Because if “Rome” simply equals “whoever’s currently in power,” then what kind of religion do we have? The people who are in power are there because they represent something eternal, something greater than them. It’s silly to think that we answer to the Pope because of who he is as an individual. No. We answer to him because he represents the eternal Catholic Faith.

So yes. Roma locuta, causa indeed finita est. Is my take.

“But Mith, ‘where Peter is, there is the Church!’” – The Society is not not where Peter is. They’re not in schism. “But they were excommunicated” – one: the excommunication was lifted years ago, and two: even if they’re excommunicated, if the source of the excommunication is corrupted, then maybe the “excommunication” should be taken with a grain of salt. And three: what even is an excommunication? It’s a severing of a connection, isn’t it? The SSPX does not see themselves as severed from Rome. They pray for the Pope and acknowledge his authority and supremacy. They cooperate with diocesan priests whenever necessary. They are still members of the family. Just members who dare to dissent.

If an American citizen complains about corruption in the government and tries to do something about it, do they stop being an American citizen?

Or, think of a nuclear family – a father, mother, and kids – and imagine the parents become mentally ill. They start telling the kids to do crazy things, and stop enforcing rules to protect the kids’ safety. If one of the older brothers takes the younger siblings under his wing and takes it upon himself to enforce rules and teach proper discipline the way he grew up with it before his parents fell ill – isn’t that very noble of him? Wouldn’t that be wise and loving of him, even if some of his other siblings accuse him of being disobedient to their father? The son in this case is not abandoning his family. He’s not denying that his mom and dad are his parents. He’s not even moving out of the house. He’s just trying to help his family, and to preserve the actual family values, lest they be forgotten – because if those values are forgotten, then what even is the family anymore? Just a group of people.

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The news of the consecrations is encouraging and exciting, because new Bishops are needed — but also troubling. So far, there haven’t been any conclusive results or decisions from the Superior General’s correspondence with the Vatican officials. But, take note: the SSPX is seeking permission to do these consecrations. Because they are Roman Catholic, they are part of the Church, and answer to the Pope.

“But that’s meaningless, because they’re just going to go through with it anyway even if Rome says no!” – true, because if that happened, it would constitute a state of emergency, and canon law permits such consecrations in a state of emergency. It is troubling because no one wants it to come to that. No one wants to disobey the Pope. No one wants this to lead to an excommunication.

It’s like calling 911 when there’s a masked guy with a gun at your door trying to break in. You beg them to send the cops. “No, we can’t do that right now.” Or maybe they’re dawdling and don’t arrive fast enough. Do you just lay down and die, then, or do you defend your home, even if it means doing something technically illegal? State of emergency.

No one wants to get excommunicated. But the Society exists to preserve the Faith. The eternal Faith must come first, before obedience to mortal, physical structure. Objective morality exists, and these structures (Church, the law) are in place to represent that. But if they fail to represent it, then, well, a certain kind of “disobedience” is not only permissible, but required.

“Oh, so now Mith knows the Catholic Faith better than the Pope?!” Lol please. If the Pope told you the sky was green, would you believe it to be so? Because that’s not how this is supposed to work. I’m just using my little God-given senses and faculties of reason to determine that something’s not being done quite right in the modern Church, and my family’s salvation (which is my priority here) is better attended to by the SSPX.

“But bearing with the things we don’t like in the modern Church is the cross we have to bear for obedience! Jesus Himself taught us that sometimes obedience doesn’t feel good, but we still have to obey!” Is the state of the NO world something that we should tolerate? What if the Church told you to murder someone? Even if you didn’t want to do it, would that be your cross to bear for the sake of obedience? Doesn’t feel quite right, does it. That’s because the Church can’t tell us to do something that’s morally wrong. And attending an irreverent, disrespectful liturgy is morally problematic. As is raising our kids in a church that doesn’t offer them the fullness of the faith. That’s harming our kids.

We, the faithful, are actually entitled to good teaching and reverent liturgy. Just as a mother owes her child nourishment and instruction because of the nature of their relationship, our Holy Mother Church owes us good formation and undiluted sacraments.

“Obedience” is not what they’re making it out to be. “Obedience” doesn’t mean blind obedience to whoever’s in power. You don’t have to “know more than the Pope” to see that some things have gone wrong. It’s really very simple, if you think about it. It’s really just common sense, imo.

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So yes. There’s a chance the consecrations will result in a formal or de facto excommunication. Even I can see that. Will that change things for me, if it happens?

It’d be sad, but no. It’d be sad because it would show just how far gone the modern Church is. But in a way, it’d be nice to finally have some clarity. All this murky “canonically irregular, “partial communion” (made-up term btw) business, is really confusing and off-putting. If an excommunication happens, at least we’ll all be able to see what’s really going on, in black and white. If the mainstream Church excommunicates the SSPX, I’ll be very sad, but I’ll still be sticking with the latter.

And I don’t imagine that much would really change, in practice. The Pope would still be the Pope. And I would still love him as my Holy Father. It’s not like the Society would elect a new Pope, because they literally don’t have that power (and they are obedient to Eternal Rome, so they follow such rules). There’s only one Pope. And they would continue to pray for him and see him as their Supreme Pontiff and Holy Father. They’d just have to wait and keep surviving as they’ve been doing, until Rome heals and embraces them fully again. Which will happen one day.

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So that’s just my little thoughts. I don’t reply to tweets or IG/FB comments, nor really post on social media at all, so I just needed a chance to respond to all these ignorant commenters, to scream into the void a bit, after reading so much hatred online lately. I am praying for the consecrations and everyone involved, and for the healing of the Church. I hope you are too.
Is it ok to dress frumpily?: on whether fashion sense is a moral issue

February 15th, 2026

This post will be related to my previous posts “is it okay to be ugly” and “is it okay for women to wear pants”; but, we’re getting a bit more specific here. Really narrowing the focus. Now, the Question That Keeps Me Up At Night is: is it okay for me, as a woman, to dress “frumpily”?

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The Post That Inspired This Post:

You all already know I’m a big fan of the work of the contemporary Traditionalist Catholic writer Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. He’s a hero; he’s the coolest. I follow him on social media and read his website regularly, and pretty much every sentence he writes makes me want to stand up and throw my hat in the air and applaud, because he’s so brilliant and so eloquent and makes his points so beautifully. Never before had something he posted made me pause, frown, raise an eyebrow, and go “hmmm, now wait just a moment there, Dr. K” – never, until yesterday.

The post in question is promoting a new book – not his, but someone else’s: a book written by a female author about how clothing/fashion has changed in recent decades, how it’s gotten uglier and poorer in quality and design, how we can return to dressing nicely, and why this should matter to us, especially as Catholics. Specifically talking about women’s fashion.

One of the main points of the book/post seems to be that, these days, women who dress modestly tend to sacrifice beauty — dressing like pioneers or in unflattering trash bag-like outfits. Frumpily. And it’s saying that, actually, women should try to dress both beautifully and modestly.

Almost everyone in the comments seemed to agree with the message. One commenter even said something like: “yes! Women should look like beautiful flowers and men should look like tall trees.”

Meanwhile, here’s me in my shapeless maxi skirt and loose, soft tee and long baggy cardigan, reading this and going: “Excuse me? Now you’re saying I have a moral obligation to try and look like a beautiful flower?? WHAT??”

Now, you don’t have to rehash the argument to me. I get it. It’s very true that fashion used to be beautiful and classy and now it’s not. I’m aware of that.

Recently, my husband and I watched “11/22/63” on Netflix, and one of my favorite parts of that show was seeing the beauty of everyday life in the early ‘60s: the clothes, the interior design, the cars, everything; beauty was important, back then. It’s not like that anymore. (There’s actuallyan IG account I really like that explores this cultural shift from a Catholic POV — you should check it out.) Historically, up until like the late ‘60s, women did dress like beautiful flowers and men like tall trees. It is sad that we as a society have stopped doing that. I agree. As a mom, I especially wish kids’ clothing still looked the way it did in the ‘50s. I’d love it if cute little lacy dresses and crisp little outfits with buttons were as easy to find as the cheap stretchy synthetic technicolor stuff kids wear these days.

However, I take issue with this post. I take issue with being told that I should dress prettier, that I have a moral obligation to wear fitted, frilly, fussy, fancy, “flowery” things.

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Is my objection a logical one, though? Do I have a legitimate argument, or am I just reacting emotionally because I’m offended and don’t like being told what to do? I’m not sure. Let’s unpack it!

Mith’s Backstory:

Quite possibly, it’s just an emotionally touchy topic for me. Clothes and I have a complicated relationship. I hate the way my body looks. Dressing the meat tank is a chore, neither fun nor satisfying. I especially hate anything form-fitting, and anything snug around my waist. I feel my best, the most comfy and confident, and the most “me,” when I’m wearing some baggy old jeans and an oversized hoodie that’s long enough to cover the butt, and combat boots. That’s my favorite look; that’s Mith in her truest form.

However, being Catholic, I knew I had to stop dressing like that. I knew I had to make an effort to look somewhat more feminine – to look like I cared a little bit. So I threw out all my jeans, and now only wear skirts or dresses. The skirts must be long enough to cover my ankles. Not because of modesty – I’m well aware that a skirt can be modest and still show some lower leg – but because I hate my ankles most of all.

Combine this with my inability to tolerate snug-fitting tops, and the result is: loose and baggy all over. My favorite article of clothing is a hippie-ish shapeless, flowy tiered maxi dress that I own in five or six different colors and patterns. It makes me feel like I’m “wearing a dress” and thus doing my duty to be feminine and traddy, while also essentially wearing a trash bag.

Do I feel great in this look? No, but at least it’s comfortable and easy to wear and serves its purpose of concealing the meat tank in a modest, age-appropriate way.

Suits me fine. I don’t want to show off my shape. I don’t want the meat tank to be perceived.

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Islamic Fashion Mini-Rant:

To be honest, I kind of dig Islamic women’s fashion. I kind of wish Catholic modesty standards were more like theirs – that Western Christian lay women dressed in loose-fitting, floor-length garb and covered their hair. That, to me, seems more truly modest.

Before you come at me, I know full well that modesty is not about pandering to weak men. Modesty standards do not exist to make women bend over backwards to accommodate men who don’t know how to practice self-control. That’s not what a proper Catholic understanding of modesty is about. It’s about dressing ourselves with dignity, honoring the beauty of our God-given bodies without cheapening it.

But don’t the abaya and hijab serve that same purpose? They’re not trash bags; some of them are really pretty and feminine.

Not to mention more comfortable, and more accommodating for those of us who have sensory or other issues with fussy, snug-fitting clothes.

I honestly wish Catholics subscribed to this view of modesty. I’d seriously wear a niqab if it were socially acceptable for a white Christian woman in America. I think it’s a really cool idea, and sounds so freeing to wear.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not converting to Islam. And you don’t have to explain it to me, I understand the philosophy behind Catholic modesty standards: the human body is good, God created it good, and rather than just conceal it under a ton of fabric, we ought to celebrate it and honor it. Dressing in aesthetically-pleasing, form-flattering clothes is a gesture of respect for ourselves, our work, and our neighbors. I know. I hear you.

But like I said, Islamic women’s attire doesn’t communicate a negative message about femininity. On the contrary, dressing that way seems to say that the female body is so good and so sacred that, like the tabernacle, it should be concealed, only seen by those who have a God-given right to it. How is that not beautiful?

Modesty means different things in different cultures, and I guess both understandings are valid. Whether you choose to showcase the body with flattering clothes that cover it well, or conceal it beneath forgiving drapes of loose fabric — both can be considered modest. But, selfishly, I kinda wish Western culture erred more on the side of concealing.

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Mith Has a Temper Tantrum

I don’t want to be the arrogant little twat that I was back in 2012; I’m not going to come onto WordPress and post my weak arguments and lame excuses for being a bad Catholic. Maybe I should just tap out of this one. Maybe Dr. K is right. Maybe I really don’t have an excuse for dressing in trash bags. As a wife and mom, maybe I ought to dress in a way that shows respect and celebrates the body that God gave me, for which I ought to be grateful.

… All of which makes me just want to throw in the towel and say “fuck it” and just go back to my jeans and hoodies.

Because I gave them up to be a good little tradcath, even though I didn’t want to – but now, now you tell me that’s still not good enough?, that I have to switch to tight little prissy button-up numbers that will constrict me physically and mentally?

I’m honestly so tired of trying to larp as someone I’m not.

Yes, Catholicism is the truth. I believe and profess everything that the Holy Catholic Church teaches. But nowhere does she dictate a certain aesthetic or lifestyle. Nowhere does she say that, if you’re a woman, you must be a girly-girl fashion plate.

I’m not the archetypical sweet little feminine tradcath stay-at-home mom with her apron and sourdough starter. I never will be. That just ain’t me, and I’m so tired of forcing myself into what basically amounts to a poorly-executed cosplay.

“If you respected yourself, you’d dress like it” – well, you know what? I don’t! I don’t respect my body! It sucks! I accept it, but I don’t like it, and I don’t want to show it off. I don’t want to look like a beautiful flower, because I don’t want to be seen as something to “pick” or “pollinate.” Tbh I don’t want to be seen at all.

Shit like this, this whole “should, should, should”, lifestyle extremist traddy attitude (traditude?), makes me want to give up and cut my hair short again. Honestly, I love the way it feels to have super short hair — but have been gritting my teeth and forcing myself to keep some length because “fEmiNiNiTy” and “bEaUtY stAnDaRds.” But, if even my efforts thus far aren’t good enough, and I’m not allowed to dress like a Muslim (because that would be highly unusual for a Christian in our society, and call undue attention to myself, so it could be seen as immodest or even prideful), then literally, F it. I’m done.

I’m tempted to go full Revenge Ugly again.

But, I must admit: Revenge Ugly is not a healthy attitude to have. The part of me that wants to be Revenge Ugly doesn’t come from God, I’m pretty sure.

Because if I really respected my body and liked it and were comfortable in my God-given skin — if I were free from disorder, basically — then yes, of course I’d dress like a beautiful flower! Wouldn’t we all?

Or would we?

Self-hatred analogy

I read something once on a Catholic social media page that compared a woman who dresses “badly” – chopping her hair short, dying it blue, wearing ripped jeans and tattoos and piercings and all – to the way Catholic architecture changed after Vatican II. Catholic churches lost their grandeur and beauty and meaning, and became uninspiring and drab.

The OP claimed that both of these – the modern woman and the modern Church – are acting from a place of self-hatred. Modern Catholicism hates Catholic Tradition, which is the actual essence of real Catholicism, and that’s why modern churches look like the way they do. Similarly, the woman who chops her hair and wears ripped jeans and gets tattoos, is a woman who hates herself, hates what she is at her core, even if she doesn’t realize it (according to OP). She hates her body and her God-given femininity. She lacks a healthy self-respect and respect for the One Who made her, and that’s what her style communicates.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know it’s true for me. I dress like trash, and I do struggle with self-hatred. So I’m afraid I can’t prove OP wrong.

“But Mith, maybe if you tried dressing better you’d stop hating yourself! Sometimes you have to fake it till you make it! You have to pretend to be asleep before you can fall asleep, ya know?, and that’s how life works.” — Bold of you to assume I haven’t already tried this zillions of times in my thirty-six years! Bold of you to assume that I don’t always naturally, gradually revert back to baggy hoodies, having wasted a bunch of money on clothes that I never wear! And even bolder of you to assume that my self-hatred is so ephemeral as to be cured with something like a change of clothes!

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Now I finally get to the argument

“Women should look like beautiful flowers and men like tall trees” – really? I dunno about that.

“Can”, sure. But, “should”? Not so fast.

I’m still not convinced that we as women have to look like that. Yes, it’s nice when a woman dresses beautifully. And a beautiful, well-composed outfit does communicate something about God’s design for woman and her purpose. Which is beautiful, maybe even the most beautiful thing in the world.

God designed woman to nurture, to care for, to welcome, to receive, to host, to self-sacrifice, to be soft and gentle and lovely like a flower. And God designed man to provide, to be strong, to protect, to shelter, like a tall tree.

But, does that really mean that all men and all women have to dress like flowers and trees, respectively?

Because it’s also cool, isn’t it, when women are buff tomboys. And when men are pretty and good at makeup. It may be unconventional, but, there’s nothing sinful about that. Some people have real gifts that don’t align with traditional gender roles.

People are all so different. People have different personalities, different strengths and weaknesses, and it’d be dumb to pretend we don’t – to try to force every woman to be ultra-feminine and every man to be hyper-masculine.

For whatever reason, some women are not very feminine, and some men are not very masculine. So what? Are those men and women failing morally? Are their style choices proof that they hate themselves?

That may be true of Mith, but I don’t think it’s necessarily true of everyone.

As I said in my other post: buff tomboy women and effeminate pretty men may not look the part of the “ideal candidates for marriage” in the traditional sense – but that doesn’t make them less valuable as humans. A human’s value is not dependent upon their marriageability.

And, as I said in my other post: yes, of course we as women should all strive to imitate the Blessed Mother. But, it seems to me that imitating her virtues — humility, obedience, charity, patience, mercy, generosity — ought to be more important than dressing like a girly-girl. A buff tomboy could obviously still excel in all of those virtues.

Do I wish nicer clothes were widely available and affordable, like back in the ‘50s, for those who care to dress that way? Absolutely. That would be a major improvement for society.

But do I also like that there are other options for those of us who have preferences or issues that make that sort of dress highly uncomfortable? Absolutely.

Why can’t we do both? Isn’t there room for all of us, here on God’s green earth?

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An Adjacent Complaint

But wait, I’m not done yet!

Another issue that I have with these traddy lifestyle extremists is this: they tend to be very well-off financially, and they are quick to assume that everyone else is too.

“Only shop at these special shops I’m recommending that sell nice, quality, beautiful clothes” – okay, but what if I’m on a Goodwill/Walmart budget? Not all of us can afford to have an ~aesthetic~.

“You can shop secondhand and still dress beautifully” – yeah, maybe if you make a whole time-consuming hobby out of it, spending hours and hours of your life scouring the racks at stinky Goodwill for a rare “nice” find (which I acknowledge some people out there love to do, it’s a legit hobby and they call it “thrifting” and I respect it). But not everyone has the time or the energy to do all that!

And even if we did, not all of us have an eye for fashion! Even if I spent hours finding a decent piece at Goodwill that also happened to fit me (odds of both at once are slim to none) – I wouldn’t know how to style it.

“Just make your own clothes, then, like they did in olden times” – um, no. Zero interest, sorry. I’m an ILI, not an SEI. I’m not going to spend precious free time at a sewing machine doing some mindless task when I could be reading or writing or doing something else that’s mentally enriching for me.

“Well, Mith, if this were the olden days, you’d just have to suck it up and sew your own clothes and wear beautiful dresses, even if you were uncomfortable – you wouldn’t have the luxury of choice!” Yeah, true, but, guess what! It’s 2026! Technological advancements exist, and not all of them are bad. Our ancestors wanted an easier life for us, which is why we have options now that they didn’t. We don’t have to pretend it’s the 19th century to be good Catholics.

Do we?

Is it so bad to take advantage of modern conveniences, as long as we do so without sinning? Is it so bad to acknowledge that people have different personalities, different dispositions, and to allow them to act and dress accordingly, as long as they do so without sinning?

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In Conclusion

Now that I’ve had my little tantrum and calmed down, I think what Dr. K was trying to say was: beautiful clothing needs to become the norm again. But, actually, he never said that it’s wrong to not be normal.

So you know what? I agree with him. Beautiful clothes should be the norm. We should bring them back.

But even if we do, I’m still gonna dress in trash bags. I will look around me at all the beautifully-dressed people and go “hurray! Nature is healing!” and keep right on dressing in a trash bag, because evidently I am not done healing yet, and (ugh, gag me, but) maybe that’s okay. Not ideal, but permissible.

So, imo, it is okay to look frumpy. Not ideal, but okay.

Because it’s okay to not be entirely well, and it’s okay to not be normal.

Feel free to try and convince me otherwise in the comments, though.

In the meantime, I think I’m gonna go try to dig up my old jeans and a hoodie.
Should I fast for Lent if I have a history of EDs?, Part Two

February 13th, 2026

And now it’s almost Lent again, and, as always when a penitential season comes around, I am once again asking myself: what should I, as someone with a long history of EDs, do about the whole fasting thing?

I addressed this in a previous post, the tl;dr of which is: most people say that, if you have an ED, you shouldn’t fast from food, but find a different way to fast; to which the voice in my head replies: why? Isn’t it wimpy for me, as someone who struggled for 15+ years but is currently physically fine and in maintenance mode, to claim exemption from fasting? Isn’t that cheating? Wouldn’t the great ascetic saints, the ones who subsisted off Holy Communion alone, scoff at me? Wouldn’t the desert fathers laugh and roll their eyes? “My poor wittle mental health!, fasting might hurt my feewings!, I don’t wike myself, wah wah 🥺”, isn’t that pathetic of me?

(And for the record, as I’m sure anyone with an ED will understand: the voice in my head is only this critical with me — it is not talking about you (it’s like, “other people are allowed to exist, eat, feel, and be vulnerable, but NOT you!!, it’s lame and gross when you do it!”, etc., etc.; we’re all familiar with its double standard, aren’t we?). So I’m not making fun of anyone else, or calling anyone else pathetic — just narrating my own little weird mental process, which maybe some of you can relate to. If you have an ED history, I do NOT think that YOU should fast from food — you are obviously exempt. It’s only me who’s the fat pathetic loser, according to the inner voice.)

So: I’m always wondering: should I fast or no? Am I being hard on myself, or being too soft? What do I do??

Thankfully, I heard a really great sermon on Lenten practices recently, which shed some light on the matter. So here I am to write a follow-up to the post linked above, and to hopefully put this Question That Keeps Me Up At Night to rest once and for all.

In his sermon, this priest clarified some things about Lenten practices. For most of you Catholic readers, these will probably not be news, but I am an idiot and a bad Catholic who needs things boiled down to the basics and spelled out and at like a fourth grade reading level, so for me it was groundbreaking. I had never heard it explained this succinctly before.

Penance and mortification: both are things we resolve to do during Lent. Up until now, I’ve had a pretty nebulous idea of what these were. I thought that they were the same thing, essentially, and tbh never considered that that might not be true.

But actually, if I understood this priest correctly, there are differences between “penance” and “mortification.” The former is a work that we do to atone for past sins. The latter is a discomfort or inconvenience that we voluntarily take on in order to fight ongoing sin/temptation — to counteract a disordered tendency in our current life.

And he went on to explain that, to really have a fruitful Lent, we should practice these in a targeted, specific way, unique to our own personal situation. It’s not just “oh, I’m a sinner so I’ll give up sugar to make myself uncomfortable.” Lent is not about just being uncomfortable for the sake of being uncomfortable. It’s about removing obstacles to God’s grace. Which means that it’s much more useful if we look at our unique sins, imperfections, and bad habits, and tailor our Lenten practices to work against those.

Wow! No one had ever explained it to me like this before. W/r/t Lent, I’d always just been told “prayer, fasting, almsgiving.” Which is obviously good advice. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are things we should do more of, especially during Lent. But, this priest explained in his sermon, for maximum spiritual benefit, each individual should practice them in an intentional, specific, targeted way.

I’m just a stupid layperson, so what do I know, but: I feel like that’s a really important addendum.

It’s not necessarily a great idea to just tell everyone, in general: “you should fast.” Because what if someone is breastfeeding, or has a history of EDs (it’s me, I am both), or something else like that. “Just fast” is not good advice for that person. Similarly, “just give alms” might not be the best advice for someone with no money to give. Obviously we are all obligated to give money, but “just give more” isn’t always an option for everyone. Some people have to find other ways to be charitable. Humans are messy creatures and life is weird. So it’s complicated sometimes.

Which is why I asked in my previous post: what should someone in my situation do for Lent?

Thanks to this good priest, I see now that our penances and mortifications not only may, but should be tailored to our unique spiritual state, our unique weaknesses.

Maybe not every mortification is equally spiritually beneficial for every person. Someone who struggles with sloth might want to try waking up early and being productive every morning; someone who struggles to sit still in silence and solitude might want to schedule a block of quiet prayer time daily.

Fasting from food is a good practice for someone who has trouble practicing self-control with food. But if someone has the opposite problem, and has trouble letting go of control around food — well, it probably wouldn’t be spiritually beneficial for that person to fast from food, would it?

Which is not to say that I personally intend never to fast from food again. One day when I’m not pregnant or nursing, I look forward to fasting from food in some kind of way (a part of me looks forward to it a little too eagerly, if we’re being honest). But as it is right now, nursing a baby who has a sensitive gut, while also trying to sort of normalize after pregnancy, my diet and body image and mental health are such a touchy balancing act, which I am managing very carefully by only eating safe things at safe times — it’s just a real precarious tower of cards situation, right now — that I wonder if fasting from food just isn’t the wisest idea.

So what will I do then? Well, that will require me to look at myself and my life and figure it out.

But I’m glad that I can stop stressing about this particular question — at least, for this Lent. You’ll probably catch me yakking about it again come Advent.
A Defense of “PAW Patrol”

January 21st, 2026

PAW Patrol: parents love to hate it. It’s the worst! It’s so ubiquitous. It’s so annoying. It’s so bad for kids’ brains. I used to feel this way, too.

Since I’m apparently now in the business of defending TV shows that other people hate, allow me, if you will, to make my little case here for PAW Patrol.

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My kids were never supposed to watch PAW Patrol. As a new mom, I found it revolting. I never wanted them to see it, or even know about it. Nowadays, I love it; I’m a big fan, and we watch it together on the regular.

So what happened?

It started with string cheese. At their grandparents’ house, my kids were given string cheese sticks that had images of PAW Patrol characters printed on the packaging. Thus, they began to learn the different characters’ names and colors. Soon they could identify them on sight when they saw them in other locations. Putting cartoon characters on food packaging really is a genius marketing move.

My kids’ intensifying fascination with these characters from the packaging on string cheese (and diapers, and graham crackers, and kids’ shampoo, and pretty much everything else for kids), led to me at last, begrudgingly, allowing them to view clips of the show in our own home. Then, when I was in the first trimester with my fourth baby, and sick 24/7, I finally gave up the fight and just let them binge-watch full episodes on Paramount+. Just all day long: PAW Patrol!, PAW Patrol!, be there on the double!

But I hated it. I hated the lazy animation style, the skull-piercing voices, the brainless music, the sheer idiotic absurdity of the plotlines, and above all, the way my kids were so obsessed with it. Just ask the internet: they say that PAW Patrol was basically lab-created (that’s laboratory, not Labrador retriever) to hypnotize your kids and get them addicted.

What garbage. I resented it, but permitted it anyway because for a couple months there I was too sick to do much of anything at all, and by the time the sickness faded around week 20, my kids were hopelessly hooked.

As time went on, I occasionally tried to banish PAW Patrol from our house, thinking it was in my kids’ best interest. I’d pack up all the plastic toy pups and their plastic vehicles, the plastic cups and plastic placemats and all the plastic merch and chuck it in a plastic trash bag and hide it in the basement because I didn’t have the heart to just throw it away entirely.

“From now on, we will only watch wholesome shows like Little Bear and Puffin Rock,” I told myself firmly. “If I just never show them PAW Patrol again, never buy any more PAW Patrol shit and never breathe another word about it from this moment forth, they have to forget about it at some point, right? From this day on, we will be a proper old-fashioned Catholic family, cleansed of the stains of all that worldly garbage!”

Inevitably, the merch would come back out several weeks or days later, because my kids asked for it and I am a softie.

Recently, I got sick of this cycle, and decided to just let go ahead and let them have their beloved PAW Patrol.

Why? What happened?

I think the biggest factor in this decision was my realization that my oldest is about to turn six, and pretty soon, she won’t even be interested in PAW Patrol anymore. She will outgrow it, probably within a year or so. My nephew, who’s only nine months older than she is, is already over PAW Patrol, and on to more mature six-year-old things. Those days will soon be upon me. And it’s actually heartbreaking: the passage of time, how quickly your baby grows up. I’ll wake up tomorrow and none of my kids will care about PAW Patrol anymore. And I’ll look back on these days and wish for just one more minute of their precious innocence.

Because that’s what PAW Patrol is. It’s innocent. I mean, come on: it’s a show about superhero puppies. If you actually sit down and watch it, you will see just how innocent it is. The music, the animation, the way the characters dress and talk: it’s all very childish, very clean and simple. It lacks the glossy flashiness and Hollywoodesque aspirations toward tweenhood that you see in something like Super Kitties (which I abhor, and nipped that obsession in the bud without a trace of guilt) or KPop Demon Hunters. It also lacks the purely hypnotic, mindless, brain-numbing singsong quality of something like Cocomelon. PAW Patrol is just simple, colorful, back-to-basics animation with childlike stories and dialogue. There’s nothing sinister, nothing suggestive of anything more mature, and the “jokes” are painfully simple; that’s exactly why kids age out of it around six or seven.

And the stories in PAW Patrol are all about helping people. That’s the whole gist of the show: cooperation is fun, you can do hard things, and helping others is cool. Literally what is the issue?

“Lab created to hijack your kids’ brains and stupefy them” – blah blah, enough with that. Sure, it’s not high quality edifying stuff, but PAW Patrol isn’t going to make good kids bad. Like most worldly pleasures, PAW Patrol can be enjoyed responsibly, in moderation. My kids are not iPad kids. They have never owned a tablet. They love reading books, drawing, playing pretend, and going outside; they’re decently well-behaved; and all of them are highly intellectually advanced for their ages. And they also happen to love PAW Patrol.

So, I’m not convinced that all of the paranoia about PAW Patrol “ruining our kids’ minds” isn’t just a bunch of tin foil hat-type blathering. I really think people love to hate things that are popular. Back in the days when novels were a recent innovation, people thought those were brainrot and a waste of time, too. Probably thirty years from now, PAW Patrol will be considered vintage and cool and “crunchy” the way Little Bear is now. Hating PAW Patrol is just as much a trend as the show itself; change my mind. Being rational: there’s simply not sufficient reason to banish PAW Patrol entirely.

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Admittedly though, my change of heart about PAW Patrol was not entirely rational. My decision was based, about 75, maybe 80 percent, on emotion.

For one, there was the aforementioned realization that my sweet babies are growing up quickly, and all too soon will no longer care a whit about PAW Patrol. You ever feel homesick for a place while you’re already there?

And for two: after a year to eighteen months or so of PAW Patrol being part of our lives, it’s gradually become, well, just that: a part of our lives. It’s weird. In the beginning, PAW Patrol felt to me like this malignant force that encroached upon my family from without. But now, for better or for worse, it has become part of us, woven into the fabric of our family life. And I like our life. The citizens of Adventure Bay have become good friends of mine, by now.

“You’re just being a lazy mom, Mith! If you really cared about your kids’ well-being, you wouldn’t show them this filth at all, much less let it infiltrate your lives to such an extent.”

Ah, the “lazy mom” accusation. Yes, this one gets thrown at moms on the internet all the time, whenever they have the audacity to try to make life easier. I honestly think people just hate moms and want them to suffer (and sometimes it’s moms who hate on other moms in this way, which imo just betrays a very-thinly-veiled self-loathing and a deep frustration with their own lives). As moms, we are, believe it or not, actually allowed to choose the easy way sometimes. Like most things, it’s not black and white (“giving screen time at all means you’re a failure!” “You don’t love your kids if you don’t cook them three meals a day from scratch!” etc.); it’s a matter of moderation. “Lazy” because sometimes I want my kids to sit still and be quiet so that I can give one of them a bath, or clean the house or, God forbid, sit down and drink a cup of coffee or something? Sure, why not. Call me lazy if you want. My kids are happy, healthy, intelligent, and loved; I’m solo parenting and homeschooling them (four five and under) on a tight budget, with no village around me, but, sure, go off I guess.

Not trying to say that I have it harder than anyone else. Parenting is hard, no matter what your situation. This is not the suffering olympics. PAW Patrol makes things a bit more fun and easy at times. And as far as I can see it does no harm. So try again to explain to me why it’s so bad.

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Finally, just for fun: being a Catholic mom and a PAW Patrol mom, I’ve taken the liberty of assigning a patron saint to each of the pups:

Chase: St. Michael the Archangel, the Prince of the Heavenly Host and defender against demons.

Skye: St. Joseph of Cupertino, obviously: famous for levitating during prayer.

Rocky: St. Joseph the Worker: quiet, responsible, happy to be in the background, good with tools.

Marshall: St. Lawrence, who was a comedian and, like Marshall, associated with fire.

Zuma: St. Brendan the Navigator, famous for sailing across oceans and exploring the world.

Rubble: St. Thomas Aquinas: bit of a counterintuitive choice, maybe, but Aquinas was a chunky fellow who was nicknamed “the dumb ox,” so I think he might actually identify with Rubble the most out of all the pups.

Is PAW Patrol a good Catholic show? No, of course not. It’s very secular. In their holiday special, they even said some cheesy line like “the real meaning of Christmas is giving!” – thankfully, my five-year-old heard that and exclaimed “no, the real meaning of Christmas is the Birth of Jesus!” Which led to a good conversation about how we need to share the Gospel with those who haven’t heard it. See? It may not be a good Catholic show, per se, but it can be part of a good Catholic life.

That’s the thing. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just (if you’re a toddler parent in 2026 who doesn’t literally live under a rock) a part of life.

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I imagine one day when I’m old and gray and an empty nester, I’ll be sitting alone in my clean, quiet living room, reminiscing, and I’ll look around at the emptiness and lack of clutter and toys, and sigh, and pick up the remote with my withered, liver-spotted hand and switch on some PAW Patrol, just for old time’s sake, and probably sing softly along with the songs, PAW Patrol!, PAW Patrol!, in my creaky lonely old-lady voice: be there on the double! And I like to think that I won’t have too many regrets.
On Unaliving: Another Unpopular Opinion

January 10th, 2026

Daily writing prompt
If you could un-invent something, what would it be?
View all responses

Here we go! I just know I’m going to get a lot of flak for this one. (If anyone actually reads this post, that is, which I highly doubt anyone actually will; it’s majorly annoying to me when I post an answer to a Prompt and get a ton of “spam likes” on it from people who don’t even read the post but just want to draw attention to their own blog and get me to subscribe to it. If that’s you, please just don’t even bother clicking “like.” I’m not going to follow spammers.)

Especially as a Catholic blogger, I expect my answer to this question won’t win me any fans or friends. My fellow Catholics are surely not going to agree with this. The thing is, I’m a traditionalist (some might even say a radical one), and as such, when it comes to American politics, I lean conservative, definitely more to the right than the left. But on this one particular issue, I don’t really line up with other right-wingers.

But I’m going to post it anyway, because it’s something I’ve felt strongly about for a long time — indeed, I’ve been saying for years and years that I wish I could go back in time and un-invent this thing, that I think it would do a lot of good in the world if this thing were simply erased from existence. And what is even the point of this stupid little blog if I can’t use it to voice my weird and unpopular opinions?

I don’t usually like to get political here, but for me, this one’s more of a common sense issue than a political one. The thing that I’d like to uninvent is (and hear me out): firearms.

In this post, I will briefly explain why I would un-invent guns, and then I will address some potential objections that I foresee readers having to my argument. Finally, I will get to how this relates to the more immediate and real-world issue of gun control in the US.

Why guns?: Because, they do more harm than good. They make it too easy to kill humans. It should not be that easy to kill someone. That’s it. It’s really that simple.

Now, I’m fully aware that guns are not the real problem, when we’re talking about the gun violence epidemic. “The real problem is mental health,” some people say, and that is kinda true — but IMO the real reason people’s mental health is so poor is that we’re living in a Godless society. “We have a mental illness epidemic” is just secularese for “we need Jesus.” (Not that mental health issues aren’t real — of course they are, and devout Christians can suffer from them even while practicing their faith sincerely — it’s just that our society is handling things, including mental health, very poorly because our society is so secular, and many mental health conditions have reached epidemic status because of this Godlessness.) If I may be so bold as to diagnose grave societal ills while sitting in a recliner and nursing my baby, the real problem here IMO is not guns, not mental health, but, frankly, lack of a healthy fear of God.

And the solution, i.e. the conversion of society and the subjection of American culture to Christ the King, is a very slow, very gradual work in progress. In the meantime, we need to do something to stop the bloodshed — to reduce the harm done while this mental/spiritual healing takes place.

Think of it this way. Let’s say that a violent criminal breaks into your home and has your spouse and children at gunpoint. Magically, time suddenly pauses, and you are presented with two options for how things will proceed: option A, when time un-freezes, a psychiatrist and therapist and/or priest will appear to have a talk with this criminal and try to calm him down and work on his mental/spiritual health, which are of course the real problem here after all. Or, option B, when time un-freezes, his gun will magically disappear.

Tell me, who in their right mind would not choose option B? We must neutralize the threat before we can work on the problem.

This is the situation that our country is in. True, guns are not the problem, but we still need to get rid of them, to minimize damage while we address the real problem, which will take time.

“But Mith, what about self defense? Protecting our loved ones and our property?“: If no one had a gun to threaten you with, you wouldn’t have to have a gun to defend yourself, would you? Okay, so maybe someone’s threatening you with an edged weapon of some sort; you’d probably have one too. In a world with no guns, maybe folks would just fight each other with blades or clubs or their bare hands or some such, like cavemen. In this world, you’d necessarily have some other tool or skill to fight back with.

Because it goes without saying that doing away with guns would not do away with crime or violence. It’s true that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” — but it’s also true that guns make it way too easy to kill people. At least if we were using blades, clubs, or our bare hands, there’d need to be some kind of physical exertion, some kind of athleticism — you’d have to earn it. And yes, I’m aware that shooting well is a skill and an art. But that doesn’t change the fact that it removes the killer from the victim in an unnatural way — it reduces killing to, essentially, the push of a button. It shouldn’t be like that. If you’re going to kill someone, to take a human life, you should have the skill, the strength, the prowess, and the sheer guts to do it in a manner that honors the seriousness of that purpose.

If you wanted to defend your property, you could do so with other methods. Like a moat, or archery, or martial arts, or, I dunno, a freaking trebuchet or something. I’m no weapons expert. I’m just saying, we should bring back the medieval style. People still managed to kill each other, and defend themselves, back then, and they did so in much more respectable, authentically human ways.

“But guns allow me to defend myself from a safe distance.” Try archery? Or, to get real medieval with it, axe-throwing?

“But those are hard to do.” Well, painting a picture or writing a book is harder than churning out some AI-generated slop, but it’s still better to do things the human way. It takes more effort to grow and cook your own food than it does to order fast food, but the former is better for you than the latter. It takes more effort and self-denial to meet someome, marry them, put their needs before your own, and accept responsibility than it does to just sit and watch porn on the internet, but it is still better to do things the human way. Most things that are better and more human require effort, require work. That’s just part of being human (Genesis 3:17).

“But what about hunting? Like for food?” Ethics of hunting and eating animals aside (another issue on which I don’t quite line up with other Catholics and Conservatives): the Native Ameicans did alright with bows and arrows and traps, didn’t they?

“Firearms have made warfare much more efficient. It’s easier now to take down bad guys.” Sure, but if the bad guys didn’t have guns either, because guns simply didn’t exist, then it wouldn’t be as easy for them to take us down, either. And honestly, should something like war/killing others be “efficient”? The only time when I think it might be appropriate to speak of “efficient” killing is when it comes to executing criminals, in which situation we have things like lethal injections. (However, even then I’m not sure if there’s really a need for an “efficient” means of execution, because if someone’s committed a crime that merits the death penalty, then they probably deserve to suffer; I kind of believe that the families of the victims ought to be given the privilege of deciding how to dispose of the criminal, in such cases, but that’s just my opinion, and probably veering into questionable territory, ethically.) Or like if the zombie apocalypse happens and you need to take out some zombies. Use a crossbow, I guess, like Daryl Dixon, lol? Is the probability of a zombie apocalypse or like a hostile alien invasion really realistically high enough to justify the risks of civilians owning assault rifles? I think not, but please, try and prove me wrong if you want.

“But guns are cool.” I know some people out there just really like guns. I get it. I can see the appeal. And I acknowledge that firearms are a complex category of tools with a long and fascinating history (well, fascinating for some, I guess). But at the same time, I think we should ask ourselves if this is really a healthy obsession to have. Why do we like guns so much? Why does the thought of killing, or of being able to kill, get us so excited? Is it actually good, to indulge that thirst for power over our fellow man? As someone with plenty of unhealthy habits and questionable tastes in things (completely aware that I’m a pot calling a kettle black here): I really think a passion for guns is morally questionable and probably not a great one to indulge.

“Okay, sure, but there’s no way to undo the invention of firearms. They exist in the world, so at this point the best thing to do is teach responsible gun ownership, not to try and take guns away, which would just leave citizens vulnerable.“

This brings me to my conclusion. Yes, I’m obviously aware that it’s unrealistic to want to do away with guns entirely. We’ll sadly never be a pre-firearm world again. In these circumstances, I do think civilians should be allowed to own guns for self-defense and/or hunting… within reason. I think there need to be way more restrictions than there currently are. For one, no civilian needs an assault rifle for any reason. You’re not going to change my mind on that. We need a lot more restrictions than we have. Although, of course, in order to have sane restrictions, we’d have to have sane, trustworthy people in power, which is probably not a realistic thing to hope for, given that all Ameican politics are basically money-motivated. So I’m aware that it’s a complicated issue, and I’m don’t know enough to prescribe exactly what kind of restrictions we need or how to implement them. But I do know that more needs to be done.

It goes without saying that we need better gun control in the US. Look at Japan. Some of the most rigorous restrictions on gun ownership in the world, and one of the lowest rates of gun violence (source, source). It’s honestly bizarre to me how anyone can say that America doesn’t urgently need to restrict gun ownership. Don’t even get me started on school shootings. If those killers’ parents simply had not had guns in their homes, none of those murders would have even happened. Or at least, not nearly as many.

Doesn’t it go without saying? I just can’t understand people who come up with all kinds of convoluted philosophical defenses for why it’s okay to not take guns away, when our children are actively getting murdered on the regular. And yes, as a conservative I think government’s control of our everyday lives should be limited — limited, but not zero. We do need government. Human societies do need some restrictions in order to ensure our safety. I genuinely do not see how it’s not obvious.

If you have a very strong pro-gun argument though, my inbox is always open. In fact, many intelligent people that I know and respect are, mystifyingly, pro-gun, so, I’m honestly curious and even open to having my mind changed; I’d love to understand the logic here, to know how people justify their position, especially as Catholics. It’s just that, as of yet, nothing I’ve read or heard has presented a strong enough argument to make me reconsider. “Unalienable” this and “constitutional” that, yeah yeah, that means nothing to me in light of an event like Sandy Hook, and I challenge anyone to change my mind.
Is it okay for Catholics to do “Santa Claus”?

December 14th, 2025

Tis the season!, the season for me, an American Catholic convert and mom of littles, to once again lose sleep over the ethics of Santa Claus.

Here is the situation, in case you’re not familiar: a great many American Catholic parents, especially the more Traditional ones, are eschewing the annual practice of “Santa Claus.” They don’t tell their kids the story that Santa Claus is a jolly fat guy in a red suit who lives at the North Pole with a bunch of elves and, once a year on Christmas Eve night, hops in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and delivers presents to boys and girls all around the world, parking on the roof and sliding down the chimney. They just teach their children from the get-go that Santa is just some dumb/silly made-up story, and that Christmas presents come from Mom and Dad.

Why do these parents eschew Santa? As far as I can gather, they do so for two main reasons: (1) to emphasize the real meaning of Christmas, i.e. the Birth of Christ, and not a commercialist orgy of spending and gift-getting; and/or (2) because they see that it’s unethical to lie to their children. Indeed, I’ve even seen claims from Santa-haters that they themselves felt “betrayed” and “traumatized” when they, as children, found out that Santa was not real and their parents had been deceiving them all along.

I will address these in order.

But first, a sliver of my personal background, so you can see where I’m coming from. I was not raised in a Christian household. My family home was happy and loving, but decidedly secular. Did Santa come to my house? You bet he did! It was magical – it was some of the happiest memories of my life, the whole Christmas season, everything about it. I’ve always loved Christmas.

When did I find out that Santa wasn’t real?: It happened organically. No one ever told me; there was no light bulb moment. I grew up and gradually made sense of what was really going on, and realized that, on some level, I had kind of known it all along. Was I sad? No. By the time I was old enough to accept that Santa was a story, I was old enough to not feel sad about it.

Did my parents lie to me? Did I feel betrayed?: No, and absolutely not! Not to invalidate anyone’s trauma, but I do think this is a kind of silly thing to call “betrayal.” (Feel free to debate me on this, though.) I do not really agree that doing Santa is “dishonest,” and here’s why:

There is a difference between telling a story/playing a game, and telling a lie. The former means: play, enchantment, creating magical childhood memories, levity, all in fun, with the intention of spreading joy. The latter is not about magic or innocent fun, but deliberate deception for some self-centered reason. Maybe the difference is too subtle for some of these mad trads to grapple with, or maybe they just haven’t thought too hard about it.

One example I like to use is this thing my MIL used to do for my husband when he was a little boy. She’d collect dollhouse furniture, and surreptitiously set it up in cute little arrangements in nooks and crannies around their house and yard, which my husband would then discover with delight, and she would tell him it was the fairies’ home. As a forty-year-old man, he still talks about this and how cool it was for him, as a kid, and he credits his Mom’s creativity for fostering his passion for fantasy and storytelling. Was my MIL lying to him? Was my husband betrayed and traumatized when he grew into the knowledge that the fairies weren’t real? Of course not!

To be fair, I guess you could argue that it can’t be called just a “story” or a “game” if one party doesn’t know that it’s a story or a game. Is it really a fair game if it’s one-sided? So maybe therein lies these Trad parents’ beef with Santa.

We should consider, though, the precious innocence of childhood: for young children, magic is entirely possible; the distinction between real and story is less clear. And while this absolutely doesn’t mean we should take advantage and deceive them, because they are people and have dignity, it does give parents a unique opprtunity to create magic for their kids through things like play, games, and stories. (Remember the movie Pan’s Labyrinth?) A child’s innocence is a beautiful thing. They are able to believe in fantastical things. Why not let magic be real for as long as it can, as long as it’s presented in a harmless and loving way?

“But is any lie ever harmless?,” you may be asking. Good question. This is an interesting point, and it is one that I keep in mind when doing Santa with my kids.

How can I make “Santa” distinct from straight-up deception? How can I ensure that I’m not just lying to my kids? Here’s my personal take:

– Whenever I speak of Santa Claus, I do so with levity, in a playful way. I don’t try to explain the logistics realistically, in literal terms, nor do I make serious threats about Santa bringing coal instead of presents or whatever.

– I try to remember to always preface claims about Santa with “According to legend, …” or “As the story goes…”

– If my child asks questions about the details of how Santa functions, my response is something like: “What do you think?” “That’s just what the story says.” “How do you think that works?”

– I’ll even tell them things like “the legend of Santa Claus arose from the real Saint Nicholas…”, i.e. sneaking in little admissions that it’s a legend without explicitly saying so.

“But still,” you may be arguing: “even if you can manage to keep it a harmless game, all this Santa Claus nonsense detracts from the real point of Christmas!”

Another fair point, and one that I make a concerted effort to address. The first two-thirds of my life I had no religion, and the first five-sixths of my life I had no children, so this whole “Catholic Christmas with Kids” thing is pretty new to me, and doesn’t come naturally.

How can I incoroprate “Santa” into a proper Traditional Catholic celebration of Christmas?

– Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas are the same person, in our house. I’ve taught my kids how the two names are synonymous: “Santa” = “Saint” and “Claus” = short for Nicholas. As we see it, he stops by on his feast day to leave a few goodies in the shoes, then comes back again with more gifts on Jesus’ birthday (which is obviously the more important day, for him, because as a Saint he loves Jesus very much!).

– When my kids start asking questions like “so does St. Nicholas come down from heaven?”, “I thought he lived at the North Pole?”, “Does he really have elves?”, I just respond with “I don’t know; that’s just how the legend goes,” et cetera.

– I have explained also that, while some people draw Santa as fat and silly, that’s probably not what he actually looked like.

– Gifts are secondary to the religious celebration. I try to remind them of this constantly by: going to Mass before we open presents, discussing the reason why we give presents on Christmas, and giving mostly religious-themed gifts.

– We also observe Advent and the full Christmas season, leaving decorations up and continuing to listen to Christmas music and do Christmas activities all the way through the twelve days.

“That’s all well and good, Mith,” you may be saying; “but why not just do away with Santa entirely? Wouldn’t that make it easier to keep the focus on Christ?”

Well, maybe in some ways it would. Why incorporate Santa? Well, I guess simply because, it’s fun! It’s magical! It brings us joy! And furthermore, we’re Americans, and Santa is an American thing. He’s part of our culture.

“SMFH. Your poor kids are going to be so confused,” you might be saying. I hope not! I admit, I do worry about this, because I’m the only person I know who does things this way, and I’m a bit insecure about it. But I hope that, if I keep being tactful and lighthearted about Santa Claus in the ways I’ve described, my kids will naturally make sense on their own, in time, of the fact that the flying reindeer and the “coming down the chimney with a sack of toys” stuff is just a legend.

And besides, one small beef that I have with the Anti-Santa Trads: why is it that y’all say it’s a “lie” and “unethical” to tell your kids Santa brings presents on Christmas – but it’s okay to play such games when it’s Saint Nicholas “bringing presents” on Saint Nicholas Day? I get the feeling that a lot of these Trads just resent Santa because he’s a popular, mainstream thing of secular American origin. Like they’re trying to be all hipster about it, refusing to like something that other, less-cool people also like. To which I would respond: come on now, it’s okay to like things. We needn’t take ourselves so seriously. Should I also refuse to wear socks because secular people wear socks? Should I refuse to eat bananas because non-Catholics grow and sell them?

“But Mith, it’s different,” you might argue. “Santa is a commercialist distortion of a real Christian Saint. Socks and bananas are neutral.” I actually would argue that Santa is also neutral. His holiness or baseness depends upon how you choose to implement him in your house.

And as I was saying above, one other thing we American Catholics have to consider is: we are American. (If your family’s immigrated to the US relatively recently, I’m not talking to you; I’m addressing those of us whose families have been American for many generations.)

America is not a Catholic country. (It’s arguably kind of an anti-Catholic country, if you look at its history and founding principles, but that’s another story.) Other countries around the world have all kinds of unique and beautiful Christmas traditions specific to their cultures. America’s holiday traditions are all vaguely Protestant in flavor, but mostly secular/commercial. Like, spinoffs of spinoffs of the real thing. Any cool Catholic traditions that are practiced in the US were brought here from other places. There really is no such thing as American Catholic culture.

So how do those of us who come from a secular, all-American background celebrate Christmas without just appropriating other cultures’ traditions? Well, I guess we could simply appropriate other culture’s traditions. But that would feel kind of forced and fake (to me, anyway, as the most boring and basic of plain white Americans). Isn’t there some way to begin to create a Christmas tradition that is authentically Catholic and authentically American? Is it possible to do both? This is the question that comes into my mind this time of year, and it’s from this question that my whole approach to Santa Claus stems.

Because how can we create a Traditional Catholic American culture, in general? Our country is so young, and Traditional Catholics are such a minority; it’s still a work in progress. Will we do it by deliberately re-creating other countries’ traditions here in the US – basically larping as Europeans? Or, will we let our culture grow organically, by incorporating and sanctifying elements of the culture that’s already around us? I feel like the latter option is more in keeping with how tradition actually works.

All of which is why, after much stress, angst, deliberation, and prayerful consideration, I’ve decided that it is possible, and even good, for a Catholic family to do “Santa” with their kids. I don’t think it’s a lie or imcompatible with practicing the faith. Indeed, I think it might even be a good and healthy way to let our Catholicim and our Americanness coexist and grow together. I think it’d be cool to see American Catholic Christmas become its own thing over time; and if it does, I think it could, or even should, include Santa Claus.

In conclusion, as the song goes: “let’s give thanks to the Lord above, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight!”
Are homesteaders morally superior to the rest of us? (Part Two)

December 12th, 2025

Previously, I published a post wondering whether homesteaders are morally superior to the rest of us. Since the time of its publication, I’ve been pondering this question further, and have spent more time with this whole homesteading, “return to the land” philosophy and with people who live by it. I’ve also been examining my own circumstances and beliefs and how those all line up, and trying to problem-solve; and, I actually feel like I may have figured this one out. Or at least made significant headway.

Which does not happen too often with these little “Questions that Keep Me Up at Night;” so, on this momentous occasion, allow me to elaborate a bit on my findings, if you care.

Are homesteaders morally superior to the rest of us?: No!, not necessarily. Is homesteading a morally superior way of life? No, not necessarily. So why then does it appear that way? Whence the confusion? Where does morality factor into this decision, which so many Catholics are making, to buy a bunch of land and livestock and become more self-sufficient? It can’t just be a random coincidence, that so many Catholics just love farming.

And no, it isn’t just a coincidence. The thing is, and this is what I’ve figured out: homesteading is simply the option that makes the most sense, for most Catholic families. Why? Because, if you take the “openness to life” thing seriously, you are likely to have more than the average number of kids. (See, when I wrote Part One, I still only had three kids. Now I have four, and the difficulty has leveled up, and now I see all of these things in a new light.)

So if you’re a faithful Catholic who’s open to life: how are you going to feed all those kids? Groceries are stupid expensive right now. Producing your own food saves money in the long run.

And what are you going to do with all those kids all day? If you live in the city or the suburbs, you’re probably going to be stuck inside most of the time. (Sure, there was once a time, not too long ago, when the suburbs were a safe place for kids to go outside and just roam and play with their friends for hours, unsupervised; but this is 2025. Those days are sadly gone.) Which means, if you want them to have stimulation and activities and fresh air, you’ll have to take them to the park, or sign them up for activities in town, all of which cost money, time, and effort. Which is kind of an unnatural way to live, and very tiring. Living on your own land, your kids can roam outside all day for fun and stimulation and, when they’re able, do actual, meaningful work to contribute to the home economy.

Not to mention, all of those kids being inside all day is going to make your house a huge freaking mess, which you’ll never be done cleaning up, and it will be extremely hard (extremely hard, I emphasize, as a mom of four living in a relatively small house) to keep the house orderly, clean, pleasant, peaceful, and comfortable for your family. How to fix this?: Send them outside! If you have land, your kids being outside most of the time means it’ll be easier to keep your house clean.

Which is kind of necessary, for a good Catholic family life. A clean, orderly, and pleasant house is not a luxury, but a requirement. It doesn’t have to be lavish, but it does have to be clean and at least somewhat aesthetically-pleasing. That much is needed, for basic quality of life: for sanity, safety, and function. And having a lot of small kids running around your small house all the time, makes it virtually impossible to meet this standard. So if you can’t afford to hire nannies and housekeepers or simply don’t want to, having land to let the kids spend time outside is just a sensible solution.

Limiting kids’ screen time is a constant effort, when you live in the suburbs/city. Because what if you need to clean the house or cook something? (Please, don’t give me the bleeding heart “just let your kids help! Kids love to help!” argument. I’m all for letting kids help where they’re able, and definitely do this as often as I can, but sometimes, we actually need to accomplish a task, and do so efficiently. Have you ever tried to let a three-year-old “help” you fold laundry or cook breakfast?) What are you supposed to with kids number 1-3 while kid 4 is getting a bath? You can’t just send them outside to play – it’s not safe. There are times when a mom needs her kids to be otherwise occupied – for them to not be actively worsening the mess. Living on your own land, kids can go outside. In the suburbs, you have to find something to do with them inside, and sometimes, screens are a lifesaver. I’d even argue that, in 2025 in the suburbs, sometimes they’re necessary.

“But you have a backyard,” you might be saying. “Just fence in your backyard.” True, but fencing is expensive, and even if you can afford it, you have limited space, and limited privacy, in a suburban backyard. Sure the kids can play out there, until they get bored, but it’s not the same as them really free ranging out in nature.

And privacy would make it way easier to actually go outside and stay outside, when you have little kids. Because I don’t know about you, but I find have a really hard time keeping my little kids fully clothed. So every time I send them outside, I have to get them dressed again – and not infrequently, my two-year-old will get partly undressed while playing outside. If I didn’t have neighbors on all sides, this wouldn’t be such a problem. In short, backyards can’t really compete with a private plot of farmland out in nature.

So, yeah. It’s not a matter of Catholics doing the homesteading thing because it’s morally superior or whatever. It just simply makes the most sense, in this day and age when everything is wildly expensive and public places aren’t safe. It’s more work, having a farm, but also, in some ways, actually significantly less work. Both lifestyles have their challenges, and can be done well or poorly.

Going back to the three moms in my previous post: I no longer think it’s true that Marge is better or more Catholic than Fran and Lois. It would just seem that, for whatever reason, Marge and her husband chose to simplify their time and budget by living on a farm. Maybe Fran and Lois are less concerned with budget, or maybe they simply prefer the hustle and bustle. Maybe they have a greater capacity for controlling the chaos inside the house, even with all the kids running around in it. Not a moral failing; we all have to choose our battles, don’t we?

So in conclusion, I’ve realized myself through experience how difficult life in the suburbs is, when you have lots of kids, and how it just makes more sense for the good of the family to live on a farm. Not only for the reasons listed above, but also for the ones I touched on in my previous post: you’re less reliant on The System, less vulnerable in the event of some kind of apocalyptic event; as well as probably healthier, ingesting fewer toxins and microplastics, and encountering less risk of contamination; also, an opportunity to live closer to God, in very real dependence upon Him, the way our ancestors did. Which is not to say that all Catholic farmers are automatically doing better than Catholic city-dwellers. I think either life can be lived well.

So yes, even I, who am always yakking about how not-outdoorsy I am and how much I hate dirt, heat, and bugs, have decided that I would like to eventually have some land, a big garden, and some chickens and goats. Would I enjoy it? Probably not, but, it just makes more sense.

The problem, though, is that in order to have this simple, cost-effective lifestyle, one has to have a lot of money upfront. To purchase the land, the animals, the supplies. Back in the day, it seems, farming was for the poor and simple folks; these days, it’s like only rich people can afford to live this simply! However, I’m not here to complain about The System or bemoan my own financial situation. I’m just here to wrap up this one particular Question that Keeps Me Up at Night. What a relief. I may never be able to afford to actually live on a homestead, but at least now I know I’m not morally inferior for living where I do.
Should Catholics celebrate Halloween?

October 30th, 2025

It’s that awful time of year again!, when all of Catholic/Christian Internet is blowing up and biting each others’ heads off about whether Christians should celebrate Halloween or not. Mostly, it’s Protestants making reels saying “we shouldn’t celebrate Halloween because it’s the devil’s birthday and if your children dress up they will become possessed” or some such, and Catholics stitching these reels with “acktchyoowally, All Hallow’s Eve is a Catholic holiday, the eve of All Saint’s Day, and a great time to pray for the dead and partake in some innocent fun, such as eating candy, carving pumpkins, and dressing up, as long as it’s nothing gory or demonic.” Then below those posts, you have other Catholics in the comments actually agreeing with the Protestants and saying that Catholics shouldn’t have anything to do with secularist Halloween traditions, that the forces of evil have taken over what ought to be a holy day.

Everyone’s talking about it, so as a Catholic blogger, I guess I feel the urge to throw my two cents in there as well. I think I have a somewhat unique POV to offer, and will try not to just rehash everything you’ve probably already seen/heard on social media.

Personally, I am against Halloween. But, I do allow and tolerate it in my house to an extent.

My opposition to Halloween predates any actual moral convictions about it. Even as a kid growing up in an atheist family, I simply didn’t like it. Halloween 1996: got sick on Tootsie Rolls and threw up a lot; subsequently developed a phobia of vomiting. Halloweens 1997-2000: a constant series of stresses and fiascoes, competitiveness, weariness, annoyance, every year asking “why do I still do this every year?! I hate this!” Halloween 2007: I was the awkward miserable kid tagging along with my BFF to her friends’ Halloween party, silently looking on as the guy that I was obsessed with showed attention instead to the aforementioned BFF, who was in every way more desirable than me. Halloween 2020: my beloved dog got sick and a few days later died. I can’t recall ever a “good Halloween” experience in my whole life!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Fall: I love apple cinnamon everything, pumpkin patches, orchard visits, colorful leaves, scarecrows, flannel, moody fall scenery, cemeteries in mist, and all of that. It’s just the pageantry and “spooky” and blood-and-gory everything, the parties and revelry, that I’ve never liked. I hate costumes. I hate going to strangers’ houses uninvited, I hate asking people for stuff, I hate partying. I have a troubled relationship with candy. After dark, I like to be indoors in my bathrobe with the TV on. Secular Halloween festivities simply don’t agree with me. It just never goes well.

When I had my own kids, I did do Halloween with them, the first few years, because it is simply the thing to do with your kids, in America; it’s just part of being a parent, I figured. That’s just American culture, it’s what you do. And it was kinda fun and all, dressing up my kids in their cute little costumes and carving pumpkins. Nothing wrong with it, I thought. A bit of extra stress, something else I had to scour Pinterest for and spend money on and try and make happen, but that was all.

But then, I became Traditional Catholic, and learned about the reasons why some tradcaths spurn Halloween. And I felt vindicated: so I was right all along, about this “holiday!” It is bad news!

“But it’s a Catholic holiday!,” some influencers argue. “Don’t forego it – reclaim it!”

Exactly. Reclaim it by going to Mass and praying for the dead – not by joining in the secular nonsense!

And as for the first part of that argument, that it’s a Catholic holiday and that makes it okay: arguments like this really annoy me. Citing the antiquated origins of something as a reason for why it’s good or not. The way some people will say that the swastika is an innocent symbol because “well, before the Nazis it was a symbol of good luck!” Okay, sure, but you know what, certain things have happened between now and then! That symbol has a whole other connotation now that you cannot just choose to ignore! Or that (one of my dear husband’s favorite fun facts:) pink is actually a masculine color because the fearsome, bloodthirsty Vikings had pink sails on their ships. That may be true, but that doesn’t change the years and years of associations around the color pink that exist in our culture; knowing this historical fact about the Vikings is not going to change anyone’s impression of you if you, as a straight man in this day and age, go around loving pastel pink.

That’s how I feel about Halloween. True, it has Catholic origins – but that fact alone does not make the secularized version of Halloween a good thing. That would be like if we all started idolizing and celebrating some trashy celebrity who stars in x-rated films just because she was baptized Catholic when she was a baby. No! Catholics wouldn’t “reclaim” such a figure by engaging with her sinful content. The only thing we would want to celebrate, in that hypothetical situation, is that celebrity’s repenting and returning to the faith.

Which is just what we should want for Halloween. Halloween, imo, should be about going to Mass and praying for the dead on the eve of November, the month of the holy souls.

However! These are my personal views and feelings. But, as I said above, I do allow and tolerate Halloween in my family home.

Why? Well, because: my husband’s views are different from mine. He loves Halloween, much the same way I love Christmas. Carving pumpkins and trick-or-treating with the kids and showing them Halloween movies is really important to him. And our marriage predates my little moment of vindication, my realization that Halloween actually is bad beyond just my personal icky associations. So, it wouldn’t be fair, for me to just suddenly demand that we ban Halloween. And I won’t do that, because I love and respect my husband; I’m not going to try and tell him he can’t have Halloween fun with his kids.

Now, if I believed that trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins were an actual sin, sure I’d probably try and fight him on it. Compromise is necessary in a marriage, and we must yield somewhere, but we must never compromise on sin.

I’m not sure I’m convinced that it’s actually sinful, though, to trick-or-treat or to carve a pumpkin or to dress up in costume. I’m not one of those who belives that simply by participating in those festivities with an innocent heart, you’re vulnerable to demonic possession.

As long as costumes and decorations don’t involve any “undead” things that make light of the desecration of a human body, or demons, or witches, or murderers, or anything like that, I’m not too worried about it being a sin. Things my kids have dressed up as for Halloween include: bumblebees, dinosaurs, bunny rabbits, and, this year, owls. Pretty sure there’s nothing dangerous about this. I’m open to having my mind changed, though, so if any Catholic readers out there have a really strong case for why even these little pastimes are dangerous, please do send me your thoughts.

It may not be a sin, technically, but that doesn’t mean I like it. I tolerate some Halloween, with restrictions, in order to appease my beloved husband. Because I don’t believe that all its trappings are evil simply because they are part of Secular Halloween. I’m not scared of Halloween, nor should any Christian be. It’s more like: this is just in bad taste; why would you do this, if you’re really a Christian?

It’s hard, here in the US, where Secular Halloween is such a part of the everyday. I remember wearing costumes to class, back when I was in public elementary school in the late ‘90s. “What are you gonna be for Halloween?” is a run-of-the-mill small-talk question, in conversations with kids. My daughters had Costume Week at their ballet studio this week (and yes, they did dress up as owls, which was a pretty funny spectacle in a roomful of pretty little princesses and unicorns and cheerleaders and Disney heroines). It’s just everywhere. As Americans, this is our culture. So, I guess it’s really hard, for American Catholics, to separate the secular from the religious Halloween. But, imo, it’s worth the effort, even if it makes you look weird. We should look weird, to a culture that’s so un-Christian! Frankly, I would love to eschew Secular Halloween entirely – but, love makes us do silly things I guess.

Now, when it comes to Secular Christmas, I think the same issue exists: for American Catholics, it can be tricky to figure out how much of the secular is okay to include in a proper Christian observance of the holiday. And there’s all this debate around it. Should Catholics do “Santa Claus”? I have a lot of feelings about this question, too, because unlike Halloween I actually like secular Christmas – quite a lot, lol. But, this question is slightly more nuanced, to me, because secular Christmas doesn’t exactly make a mockery/distortion of the Christian holiday the way secular Halloween makes a mockery/distortion of All Hallow’s Eve. I guess it could be argued that the commercialization of Christmas does just that – but, gift-giving is still a part of a proper Christian Christmas, right? It’s just that the secular version gets a bit carried away with it. Anyway – this is probably a post that I’ll write later, when that time of year comes around.

In my household, I handle this Halloween compromise the same way I handle my vegetarianism (my husband’s a carnivore). I still cook and serve meat, I just don’t eat it myself, and my kids know that I don’t like it. One day, they’ll choose for themselves whether they want to eat meat or not. Similarly, my kids know that I don’t like Halloween. Maybe, when they get older, they’ll also come to dislike this holiday. At the very least, I aim to shelter them from the ugly aspects of it for as long as they’re under my roof, and to teach them the real meaning of All Hallow’s Eve.

So yes: in my opinion, secular Halloween is a bad idea and Christians should not observe it. However, I also think it can be done innocently, if for whatever reason you really want to (which, why would you, unless you were married to a Halloween lover). I don’t think it’s scary or evil or going to corrupt your soul. And it goes without saying that certain Halloweenish themes like murder, the undead, witchcraft, and devils, are nothing to celebrate – and that certain popular Halloween habits like immodesty and gluttony are sins to be avoided. If you must do it, keep it clean, but really, why do it? That’s just my take. If you’re reading this, I wish you a blessed All Hallow’s Eve.
Watching “Adolescence” as a Catholic Mom

September 18th, 2025

Needless to say, this post contains spoilers for the show Adolescence.

A month or so ago, my husband and I watched Adolescence, which as you probably know is a highly critically-acclaimed British limited series, released earlier this year, available on Netflix. Which, btw, I just saw that that young actor just became the youngest boy ever to win an Emmy; well deserved, he acted the heck out of that role, damn. And I guess it was nominated for a ton of other Emmys as well, so I needn’t waste any time talking about what a good show it is. Personally I love the limited series format, and I wish that more shows would limit themselves to just one season; all too often, the creators keep on dragging things along long after the story’s died and rotted, just because there’s money to be had, and it’s disgusting.

But so anyway, as you know if you read this blog, I am a really stupid person and not any kind of critic or anything, so I can’t contribute anything of value to the existing discussions of this show. I don’t pay any attention to the whole “redpill” thing or to whoever Andrew Tate is, so I can’t comment on any of that, although it did seem painfully obvious to me that whoever wrote this show has like intense personal beef with this Andrew Tate. I haven’t been inside of a high school in seventeen years (thanks be to God), so I can’t comment much on the state of public education, either, although from what I’ve heard this show depicted it very accurately, which, yikes.

No, as is the case on this entire blog, I have no expertise, so the only thing I can really put out there is my personal reaction, in case anyone out there, like me, just wants to talk about it. And for me, the big takeaway, the thing that I was left thinking about for days and weeks afterwards, was: do we have any control, then, over who we are, and how our kids turn out?

As a mom of little kids, I worry about this a lot. Maybe it’s a “millennial mom” thing, but it gives me a lot of anxiety, trying not to mess up my kids. I always overthink about every single thing I say to them, and worry that I’m psychologically damaging them no matter what I do. At the end of the day: “I was too mean and strict, they’re going to be traumatized and go no-contact with me as soon as they’re grown up, and rightfully so!” Or: “I was too lenient, I’m spoiling them, what would my priest say?!, they’re not going to have any sense of respect or discipline, I am one of ‘those’ modern parents, I am part of what’s wrong with society!” It seems that no matter what I say, I always look back on it at the end of the day and think that I should have said the opposite. No matter what I do, I am damaging them somehow, and setting them up for a future full of misery and expensive psychotherapy. But, how much control do I actually have over my kids’ outcome?

In the last episode of Adolescence, it seemed like the show was simultaneously blaming Jamie’s parents, and excusing them from culpability for his actions. Yes, it was their fault, because Dad had unresolved anger issues and was at work all the time, and Mom didn’t pay attention to the warning signs, like the way that Jamie was just in his room on the computer all the time. But, also, Dad couldn’t really help it, could he, because his own dad was violent with him, and Jamie’s dad was just doing the best he could, trying to contain his rage and not take it out on his kids (but instead on things like sheds and vans). And I guess the idea was that Mom wasn’t really at fault because she lives in a world where teenagers sitting on their computers all day is normalized. Both parents were, in their ways, just products of their own upbringing and environment.

Aren’t we all? How much control do I even have over myself and my own choices? I’m not going to talk about whether or not free will exists. That question is too mind-bendy for me. As a Catholic, I know that it is somehow both true that free will exists and that God has the ultimate power as well as foreknowledge of how everything will end up – that I simultaneously have control over my actions and have no control whatsoever, which is confusing, but it makes sense as long as you don’t think about it too hard, because it certainly appears true that we have free will, and it feels weird to think otherwise. As you can tell I’m far from equipped to talk about such lofty subjects as free will.

So I guess the question here is, can anyone ever not be just a product of their own upbringing and environment? Can anyone ever not doom their children to be just products of their upbringing and environment? Is it really all just one big hopeless vicious cycle of disorder and trauma?

I admittedly stress about this a lot, and that stress definitely swelled up again, for a while, after watching Adolescence. But fortunately for me, I am, as I already mentioned, Catholic, and in the Catholic Church, we are shown the way to freedom – to breaking that hopeless cycle.

Sure, as long as you’re just being yourself, living according to your own human limitations, seeking no more than as much human satisfaction as you can get, you’re going to be stuck in the cycle. You’re probably doomed to misery. I do not know this firsthand, as I am definitely not a saint, but I know from reading the lives of the saints, that the only way to escape that cycle – to breach the surface of these whirling murky waters of human pain and struggle, and finally take a breath of air – is to become a saint. I’m pretty sure that’s the only way to be actually free. A saint is the only kind of person who’s entirely free from the world and all its emotional/psychic/material anguish. A saint lives entirely in the truth.

Hm, so, does that mean that, if I’m not a literal saint, I’m doomed to be a shitty parent, and my kids are doomed to generational trauma?

Well, first of all, I think there’s a common misconception about saints that they never do a single thing wrong. That’s not what a saint is. The saints are not the same as Christ or the Blessed Mother. On earth, they weren’t perfect. They sometimes get things wrong. But the thing that made them saints was that they loved God very much and were entirely devoted to doing His will, not their own. They are already living in eternity; they have their priorities straight. But they’re still people, i.e. imperfect. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily true that one must never ever make a single mistake in order to be a good parent, to raise mentally-healthy kids.

What, then, is the secret? – No, really, can somebody tell me? Lol. I try to do my best, but my oldest is still only five, so despite having four kids, I’m still quite new at this.

I figure probably one of the most important things one can do, when it comes to raising kids who are free from the vicious cycle that is the human condition – i.e., kids who have the best chance at true happiness – is to pass on the Faith to them. That is the most important thing that we can give them. But of course, we should also practice what we preach. It’s not going to help our kids much if we teach certain habits and virtues but behave completely differently in our own everyday lives. That will just lead to confusion and fallen-away souls. The responsibility of being a Catholic parent is incredibly daunting. Which is why stories like Adolescence make me so anxious. Am I doing enough to save my kids? Am I doing enough, am I doing enough, am I doing enough?? If you’re a mom, even a secular mom, you get it!

I’m never doing enough, it seems – but, at least my children will know their Blessed Mother, who is perfect, and who will never fail them like I inevitably will to some degree.

It’s always interesting to me when secular stories like this accidentally profess the truth of God and His infinite love. Yes, every person is indeed doomed to a cycle of hopelessness and ruin, evil and pain, if they try to live without God. I guess all good art tells us something about God, really, and that’s why it is good.
a birth story.

July 28th, 2025

As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted on this blog in over a month – not because I’m done with blogging, but because I was busy having a baby. My fourth kid was born earlier this month. Now, I don’t typically like to share a lot about physical stuff. But I thought I’d share my birth story on here, because for the first time I feel like I got it right, and am actually proud of how it went, and feel like it could potentially be useful to someone.

In the third trimester I spent a lot of time reading birth stories as I tried to mentally prepare myself; so, I figure I’ll pay it forward or whatever and go ahead and share mine for any mom out there who might happen to be reading this as she prepares for her own birth.

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Four days before my son was born, I went to confession, which I try to do every two-to-three weeks regularly. This time, the priest was one that I’d never been to confession with before. And for penance, he assigned me a prayer I’d never been assigned before, in my ten years of being Catholic: the Anima Christi prayer.

Of course I was familiar with the prayer, but it wasn’t one that I had memorized or anything. So as soon as Mass was over, I looked it up and prayed it and studied it. I was 39 weeks pregnant, and really nervous about labor for some reason, even though this was my fourth baby. I thought to myself: maybe this prayer will be a good tool to bring into labor. I repeated the first three lines over and over in my mind on the drive home, and over the coming days.

Why was I so nervous about birth? If you’ve read my post on epidurals, you already know a little about my previous three birth experiences. I’d never had a purely unmedicated, all-natural birth. My first was an induction, and even though I didn’t get an epidural, I did get IV pain meds to help me cope (fentanyl, and it didn’t even help much anyway, lol). My second was surgical. My third, my VBAC¹, I had intended to go all-natural, but got discouraged and gave up, and ended up getting an epidural right at transition. So I was haunted by feelings of failure and inferiority, like I was not a real mom somehow.

Was I going to be able to do it this time? Doubt. Maybe I shouldn’t even bother trying. I’d been reading “Made For This” by Mary Haseltine, as well as re-reading Ina May’s guide, and feeling called out and accused by every word on the pages, feeling like a failure as a woman and a Catholic; I was sure that I would end up tapping out again. I couldn’t do it; I already knew that. But, Mary Haseltine suggests embracing that: accepting and admitting that we can’t do it on our own, and totally surrendering to God. I didn’t know if I could do that or not.

The same author also suggested offering up your labor for a specific intention. I figured I could do that, in any case. I read a lot of advice and tried to internalize it all. Basically, I lost a lot of sleep, and said a lot of prayers. I tried to focus on preparing myself mentally. Because I knew that having an all-natural birth would be more of a psychological than physical feat.

I had certain expectations. I expected that I would go into labor on or around my due date, which was the coming Saturday. I expected that it would be very similar to my labor with my third, which began slowly, with very mild contractions that gradually intensified. I expected that it would be slow and grueling. For personal reasons, I did not want to have a baby on Wednesday; that was incredibly important to me, and I’d lost sleep over this too. Any day but Wednesday! (Don’t ask me why.) I’d do anything to avoid having a baby on Wednesday!

Then, Tuesday night, out of nowhere, my water broke.

Well, I say “out of nowhere,” but it wasn’t really. I guess I hadn’t recognized the signs. I’ll describe some of those signs just in case you’re curious.

I had gestational diabetes in this pregnancy, which was easily diet-controlled, and I’d noticed for the past week that my glucose numbers had suddenly dropped a lot. Things that typically spiked my blood sugar no longer did. It was like I could suddenly throw caution to the winds, with food, if I wanted to; I was actually afraid my monitor was broken or something. Apparently, this is a sign that labor is about to start. But I didn’t want to believe it.

Also, I’d been queasy for days, with a very low appetite, experiencing waves of nausea that got a little worse on Tuesday. I thought nothing of this, because I’d had a stomach bug at 38 weeks, which had me incapacitated for two or three days, and after it passed, I simply didn’t fully recover. The nausea stuck around. It was like I was back in the first trimester. I assumed I was just having a hard time shaking the stomach bug.

And I was in an absolutely shitty mood, that Tuesday. I had no patience, snapped at the slightest provocation, was irritable with my kids, and generally a crappy mom. It was like PMS. But, I assumed that it was just fatigue, and the damned stomach bug getting to me.

Despite feeling like crap, I also had this mad wave of productivity on Tuesday afternoon. I had to clean the upstairs. There was going to be a baby sleeping there soon, I needed to clean it! So I went into a cleaning frenzy for a few hours, and got the whole upstairs relatively sparkling (for a house with two toddlers and a kindergartener, that is). I assumed this was just normal third trimester nesting.

So those were the warning signs that I was ignoring. I assumed I had more time. I hadn’t even finished packing my hospital bag! Like I said, I was expecting to have plenty of warning before time to head to the hospital; with my third, I was in early labor for about a day and a half before I even felt uncomfortable. I was waiting to pack stuff until the actual signs of labor showed up.

Well, but then, like I said, at about a quarter to nine, my water broke.

What the hell? What the helly?! This had never happened to me before. With my first, my water didn’t break until I was already having painful contractions, and then it was only a cautious trickle; my third, the OB manually broke my water at seven centimeters, to move things along. I had never before experienced this Hollywood-esque moment of being surprised by a sudden gush of water out of nowhere. And on Tuesday night, of all nights?!

There went my plans! So much for not having a baby on Wednesday. I was GBS positive², so I knew that I had to get to the hospital ASAP, and that there was no way this baby would be arriving any later than a day from now, but also no way they’d be arriving before midnight tonight.

I’d also been hoping that labor might, for once, not happen overnight; I was really hoping it’d start during the day this time, when I was awake and alert, so that I wouldn’t be going into it with zero energy; but alas, here we were again.

It did not bode well. Furthermore, I wasn’t even having painful contractions yet. I knew from reading zillions of birth stories that it was almost never good when water broke without contractions. That generally meant that Pitocin³would be needed to move things along; providers don’t like to wait too long to deliver a baby once water has broken, because of the risk of infection. I’d never had Pitocin in labor before (my previous induction was with Cytotec ⁴), and I wanted to keep it that way. We’ve all heard the horror stories about how painful Pitocin contractions are. I knew that, if I had to suffer through those, I’d probably end up getting an epidural, which would probably slow things down, and the cascade of interventions would begin, and I could very well end up in the OR. (I hated my c-section, and did not want to go through that again.)

So I chucked a few things in my hospital bag (not enough, lol I forgot quite a few things) and we were off, in a mild panic. But my anxiety and dread were balanced out by an even greater excitement. For better or for worse, it was happening; I’d get to meet this baby soon.

But at the hospital, it was kind of a cluster. The nurses couldn’t find their equipment. They accidentally clicked “discharge” on their computer and checked me out of the hospital and had to re-check me in. Then they couldn’t find my vein to start the IV (that’s always fun). Nothing seemed to be going right. It was almost ten, and I still wasn’t having painful contractions. I really had no idea how this was going to go.

So I said a little prayer of surrender, trying to let go of all my personal wants and desires for how the birth would proceed. Then, between interruptions, I prayed the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary.

Here’s a cool thing. The midwife didn’t check for dilation at this point, and I’m so grateful she did not. What’s the point of all these cervical exams that women are always given during pregnancy? They don’t tell you anything about when baby will come. I wasn’t having painful contractions, so the midwife said she didn’t expect to see dilation yet, and she’d just wait to check me later. Cool! Fine with me! I didn’t need that kind of stress in my life! I was so happy to be working with midwives this time instead of OBs. Nothing against the OBs who’d helped me with my other babies, but I will always recommend midwives over OBs to any low-risk pregnant mom. It’s a world of difference, a whole different philosophy. I only had to endure two cervical exams this entire pregnancy, both of them in active labor (more on that later).

Well, they got me sorted out with the IV block, then moved me from triage to a delivery room. There, they hooked me up to a fetal monitor (this was, after all, a 2VBAC¹), gave me my first dose of penicillin, and then let me be. Still no pain. I remembered the advice of the doula who’d helped me with my third birth: sometimes relaxing actually gets things moving along. So, I took a shower, got in my fuzzy bathrobe and sleep hat, grabbed my teddy bear, and laid down for a rest. The braxton-hicks⁵were starting to feel a little bit more intense, but nothing serious or uncomfortable. I figured I’d rest while I still could. There was a long night ahead of me.

It worked. I probably only rested for thirty, forty minutes or so, before the contractions picked up. This was around midnight. So I got up and started walking around, moving through them. I wanted to to make progress, and plus, in the early part of active labor, walking or rocking or swaying through the contractions seriously helps.

But I could feel things were moving quickly. At one point my teeth started chattering uncontrollably, which meant the hormones were doing crazy things. Each contraction was a bit more intense than the last. I was feeling lots of nausea, so was pretty much just hanging out in the bathroom, at this point, and I started having to really focus to get through the pain. This was the point at which time becomes weird and you go into this strange primal otherworldly place, mentally. If you’ve ever been in labor you know what I mean.

I will share some things that helped me cope with the pain, in case you’re a pregnant mom reading this and mentally preparing for your own labor like I was.

I kept on praying. I brought out from my little toolbox the Anima Christi prayer, which I’d been dwelling on over the past few days. With each contraction I’d think about one of the first three lines:

“Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

Blood of Christ, embolden me.“

It wasn’t even an intentional thing, where I set out to meditate on one of these lines. It just kind of happened. I’d be praying and as the pain picked up my brain would slow to a stop and just kind of linger over one of these lines while I thought about the Passion or remembered my last Holy Communion just four days prior.

And – this bit sounds super uncharacteristic of me, because I’m a very negative and pessimistic person, lol – I guess the other thing that helped was staying positive about it. This was a mind game, I knew. I had to make myself like the pain. I had to be really intentional. Yes, I’d say to myself, yes, this is good. I’m coping with this so well. At one point, I could sense myself starting to get frustrated and mad at the pain, wanting to say to it, “fucking hell!, just leave me alone, stop doing this to my body!” Which created a sensation of fear. So I caught myself, and changed the narrative real quick, because that was the very path that led me to the epidural with my last baby: feeling like a victim of the pain, like the pain was something bad happening to me. This time, I intentionally took ownership of it. It wasn’t happening to me, as they say; it was me. And that actually helped. It’s seriously psychological warfare, in labor.

(A few other little sensory tricks that really help, if you’re curious: movement, vocalization, and squeezing the shit out of wide-toothed wooden combs in each hand. Randomly, I also took a weird comfort in running my hands under the faucet in the bathroom sink.)

Well, by now I was in the zone, and it was about two AM. The midwife came in to check me. She’d said she was going to wait to check me until it was time for the second dose of antibiotics, which wasn’t supposed to be for another hour; but I guess she could see that I had progressed pretty far, and she was probably afraid I’d have the baby on the bathroom floor, lol. I was pretty uncomfortable by now, so I was really hoping that she’d tell me I was at like a six, at least a five.

Imagine my relief when she told me I was at a nine! Thank God! That far already? So I was coping with this pretty well, after all?! That gave me a fresh burst of motivation: it would be over soon. She stayed with me, and directed me into this-that-and-the-other position through the contractions (which, btw, an OB would not have done), and when she checked me again at about 2:30 (all of these time estimates are very approximate, because like I said I was in that zone where everything is spacey and time doesn’t really exist), I was at a ten.

I’ll spare you the details of the next half-hour, not because anything went wrong, but just because this phase is particularly bodily. Suffice it to say that baby was born about thirty minutes later, just before 3 AM, with no interventions or pain meds of any kind.

But then came the biggest surprise of all. We were team green, in this pregnancy, waiting to find out the baby’s gender until birth. I was completely certain, the entire nine months, that it was a girl. I called the baby “she” the whole time, thinking of her as my daughter and calling her by our chosen girl name. I barely ever even considered that it might be a boy; that felt so unlikely as to not even be a real possibility. My intuition had been correct for my other three kids, so I knew, I simply knew, that this was going to be a girl.

But: he was a boy!

A boy, born all natural, only six hours from the time my water broke, only three hours from the onset of actual discomfort. What the helly!

Later that day, recovering in our room in the mother-baby ward, I was lying there watching EWTN on my TV. Daily Mass was on. It was the Novus Ordo Mass, which I generally avoid, but it was a solemn and reverent one – EWTN is great; Mother Angelica, ora pro nobis! – so I watched it anyway. If you’ve ever watched Mass on TV, you know that, when it comes time for Communion, they cut to an Act of Spiritual Communion for the viewers at home who can’t receive physically. On EWTN, they don’t always use the same prayer every single time; it changes day by day, as there are many prayers one can say for this intention.

Guess which prayer they broadcast that day, my son’s birthday, for the Spiritual Communion?

It felt like a small reassurance that Wednesday was the right day for him to be born, after all.

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Footnotes for those who might not be familiar with pregnancy terminology:

1. VBAC: vaginal birth after cesarean. Whenever you give birth the normal way after a prior c-section, there’s a risk (extremely minute) of uterine rupture at the incision site, which is terrifying and life-threatening if it happens. So when you’re in labor after a prior C, they make you wear a fetal monitor the whole time to make sure baby is doing okay. It’s not too bad, because you can still walk around and even get in the water if you want to; you just have a device strapped around your belly. 2VBAC: second VBAC, still treated the same way during labor, even if you’ve already done it once successfully before.

2. Group B strep is a bacteria that we sometimes carry and sometimes don’t. It comes and goes, and isn’t at all harmful to mom (or her husband; it’s not an STI); you can actually test positive for it one week and negative the next. But, if it gets passed to a baby during birth, it can sometimes cause them to get sick, and if that happens it’s deathly serious. So, if you test positive in late pregnancy, they just give you antibiotics during labor: two doses, four hours apart. Normally if your water breaks you don’t necessarily need to rush to the hospital unless you’re having 5-1-1 contractions^A , but, if you are GBS+, they tell you to come to the hospital immediately if your water breaks, because risk of infection goes up.

A. that is, contractions five minutes apart, lasting one minute, for one straight hour.

3. Pitocin is synthetic oxytocin, given through an IV, to induce labor or help it progress when contractions aren’t happening or aren’t strong enough.

4. Cytotec is a different kind of medication, not an IV med, but a tablet that they actually insert into your body to soften the cervix to encourage labor. When I had Cytotec I was already 40 and a half weeks along and only needed one dose, so it barely even felt like an induction, honestly.

5. Braxton-hicks contractions are these random, painless but weird contractions that most moms experience a few times a day in later pregnancy; they’re called “practice contractions,” because they’re how your uterus practices to get ready for labor. Your whole stomach gets really tight and sometimes you can feel a bit breathless, almost like you’re doing a crunch, but they don’t hurt.