Ramblings of a Recovering Trad

When I finally met a certain Trad who wields a particularly poisonous pen against Pope Francis I am sure my presence at a Traditional Latin liturgy took him aback.  I was veiled and modestly dressed, prayed from a 1962 Missal from Baronius Press, and knew the postures and responses without even having to look at the Ordinary of the Missal.   He probably would have dropped his jaw on the floor had I told him I refrain from eating meat on any Friday that doesn't fall during an Octave, pray the Rosary nearly without fail, and confess as frequently as once a week. I prefer the Douay-Rheims Bible.  I'm not bragging. I'm just saying you can't judge a book by its cover, and in this case, the cover would be the fact that I support whoever the Pope is,  I attend the Ordinary Form and, perhaps most offensive of all, I refused to vote for Donald Trump and pulled the lever for Joe Biden.     The cover is also the mask on my face, which few if any others wore ...

Today, the Traddies have their undies in a knot because Pope Francis met with President Biden at the Vatican and didn't publicly bar him from receiving Holy Communion.  According to Biden, the Pope informed him that he should continue to receive the Eucharist.  Pope Francis is keenly aware what the bishops and cardinals like Burke, Tobin and Strickland think about this.  One thing, however, they have been silent on and that is that the Catholic acting Attorney General of Oklahoma had an execution carried out last night that, from the accounts of eyewitnesses, was anything but humane. Now, I know that the victims of those murdered by death row occupants didn't have any say in their own executions.  But acknowledging that the death penalty should have no place in a society which claims to be civilized does not dismiss the victims or their grieving families.  It simply says that we are only as good as the way we treat the most contemptible among us.  Either we...

Libophobia. OK that's not actually a word so far as I know, but I'm using it to describe the reaction that some Catholics have toward me on social media and IRL because I'm not a card-carrying member of EWTN/LifeSiteNews/Word On Fire, etc.   I personally don't even think the word liberal adequately describes me because I'm straight down the middle most of the time.  There's He Said/She Said and The Truth and I like to think that I fall on The Truth's side.   But I guess if wanting to offer sinners like myself mercy and a seat at the table makes me a liberal, so be it.  Mercy that cannot be offered without condemnation is not mercy at all.   It is judgment pure and simple. Faith that is lived isolated and insulated from the rest of the world is faith not practiced.  Without works in whatever way we are capable, faith is dead.  Daily Mass, the Rosary and other devotions are part of my daily life.  I try to get to Adoration as often as...

In the run up to the Synod, Pope Francis made the assertion that uniformity is not the same thing as unity.  Christian unity is one of the graces included in the morning offering to Jesus.  Uniformity is something quite different and it does not allow much room for those who are outside the mold of what some believe makes us a Catholic Christian. The insistence on uniformity is certainly something any of us who have belonged to a Traditional Latin Mass community are familiar with and for a few of us, probably had much to do with why we decided to walk away.  You can't wear that to Mass.  You can't use that posture at Mass.  You can't say those words at Mass.  You can't pray like that at Mass.  You can't have females in the sanctuary.  You can't face that direction.  You can't sing those hymns.  You can't, you can't you can't.  There is no appeal in religion that is based on the word "no" and perhaps that's just what the rigid have i...

I returned to the Church at a time when many were fleeing in reaction to the clergy sexual abuse crisis.  If my focus had been on flawed human men, I might not have come back and in fact, could have ditched Christianity altogether.  By God's grace, my eyes were on Christ and in some strange way I thought it might be a source of consolation to Him if He could carry one of His lost sheep home on His shoulders.  Mostly through the Monastery and the Traditional Latin Mass community, I came to know and love some very holy priests.  They demonstrated what I thought was a genuine love for Jesus when they lifted the Host and lovingly lowered it to the paten.  They offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with strict obedience to the rubrics, the only deviation from the liturgy being the times they'd lead us in a Hail Mary.   Since my return, the faithful have been rocked by one scandal after another. Some scandals received national or world wide notoriety while ...

There are some Catholics who really get under my skin.  One of them graduated from law school where she failed to distinguish herself with scholarly excellence. Still, she got her JD and earned the right to have the initials "Esq" after her name.  I followed her on FB for awhile because she advocated for migrants and said she was pro-life, but when she said we should just let drug addicts die of drug overdoses and spare us their trashy lives, that was that.  I have a son in recovery and his life is not trash.  When you like to throw the pro-life label around, you'd better be able to wear it.  If you're not in favor of protecting everyone's life,  but only people you like or find acceptable, there is not much we can discuss.  Such people undermine the efforts of seamless garment Catholics.  Perhaps more grating than this is that she is willing to hurl the word "murderer" at women who have had abortions.  We can argue whether that is an accepta...

How is it that I made it through 9 years of Catholic grade school and 5 years at Catholic colleges but never knew what a divided Church this is?  I tend to think those who ran those institutions were not obsessed with the politics that have become the new catechism for so many.  I was blessed in that regard, particularly in college where I first learned that the tenets of social justice included a world peace that was not achieved through arms races, care for creation and care for those less fortunate.  Although I never went on a mission trip until well into my adulthood, there were many opportunities in college to travel to Appalachia and try to make life a little better for the poorest of the poor in a span of a weekend.  The hope I'm sure was that a spark would be lit to fuel a fiery desire to help the least of our brethren not only in college but throughout the rest of our lives.   In too many churches and among too many bishops and theologians, the tho...

To paraphrase the title of a wonderful book by a similar name,  this is what the prolife movement feels like to many of us who practice a seamless garment  approach to life.  Full transparency requires that I confess that for many years, I was on the wrong side of the issue because I respected a woman's right to privacy and believed that extended to the womb.  I know that abortion is gravely wrong, and I know God doesn't make mistakes. Human beings, however, do make mistakes because it's part of our fallen nature.  Women have been sold the lie by other women and by men who profit from abortion that terminating a pregnancy is reproductive freedom and healthcare.   In no other country on earth does the polarity that pervades American politics exist and this is due in no small part to the insistence that abortion is healthcare and must be permitted at any stage of pregnancy.  Also there is the hypocrisy of insisting that all life is sacred but doing ...

 Although I had a preference for the Extraordinary Form at one time, I was never at any point an exclusively Traditional Latin Mass Catholic.  In fact, I was probably much more active in the Augustinian Community than I ever was in the TLM cohort.  My relationship with the Augustinians had quite the inauspicious start.   When I made my first confession in almost 20 years, it was to a Franciscan priest who was overjoyed by my return to the Church.  I think he went pretty easy on me considering the length of time I was away and the extent of what I confessed.  I remember leaving that confessional box feeling 100 pounds lighter as though actual weight had been removed.  The second time I would go to confession would bear no semblance to this experience. I was probably a little too glib and certainly not penitent enough for my sins because I got an earful from the elderly Augustinian priest who heard my confession.  I was afraid one of two things...