might be silly and write bullet points for a possible tears of the kingdom fic 🫶

It’s been a long time since I’ve talked about how I came to the Traditional mass, so since the topic is on anyway: The long and short of it is the TLM was instrumental in my conversion and I wouldn’t be Catholic without it. All my words fall short, but I would dearly love to be able to tell the world with any kind of accuracy why it is so incredible, and why the world needs it.

I was baptized as a toddler and attended a typical tiny backwoods Novus Ordo parish for most of my childhood. There were maybe six kids, lots of elderly, a couple parents, and two or three high schoolers. There I learned such insightful theology as, there’s not really any good reason for women not to be priests. I did, however, have the benefit of reading the Bible a lot more thoroughly than was typical - even if I didn’t have anyone to explain it to me. On the verge of my teenage years we moved and our new parish was bigger, though with still (proportionally) tiny youth engagement. Our religious ed teachers were well-meaning but had no idea what they were talking about. Their idea of a retreat was to sit in total darkness and listen to sappy music. I quit going to mass, got confirmed, and continued not going to mass. But, praise God, I went to an orthodox Catholic college. There was a lot of Catholic Lite culture in the air, which I avoided studiously, correctly identifying it as a quasi-Protestant emotion-fest - the sugar-high version of what my high school parish was trying to instill in us. But my theology professors were the real deal. For the first time there were people who could tell me what the content of the faith was, show me its history, actually answer questions, and identify and shoot down wrongheaded lines of inquiry. It was a revelation. I promptly spent a solid year and a half studying interreligious dialogue - entering the study of truth by the back door, as it were. At the end of that, having run up against the un-negotiable “stumbling block” of Christ, whose claim to be Truth and have given it in fullness to his Church cannot be watered down or explained away, I gave up, signed on as a theology major, and got down to the business of figuring just what this “arrogant” Church had to say for herself. I was still not going to mass. My saving graces - and I mean grace literally - were a fear and awe of the Eucharist, and an emotional devotion to Our Lady.

By my senior year, I was, personally, six kinds of a wreck (which is a whole other story) but also convinced that if Catholicism wasn’t true, nothing was - whether or not I could learn to live it. Into that latent conviction, a total unwillingness to deal with its looming consequences for me, and my generally wrecky life entered a new boyfriend, stage right: he was very smart, very handsome, very stubborn, and a convert. I knew within weeks that we were destined for each other. (Spoiler alert: we got married a year and a half later.) Our arguments about politics, culture, and religion shook walls. We were both wrong, in different ways, and helped make each other more right. That Holy Week, he asked me go to the Traditional Latin Triduum and Easter Vigil. I reluctantly agreed. It could no longer be put off: I had finally come to a reckoning with the Person behind all the theology. I got my sorry butt to confession, the start of a long and painful ongoing process, and we went.

I didn’t like it.

But I was also not happy - and never had been - with the NO. 

Fast forward: We were engaged and in grad school - in different states, but within driving distance. I was the only one with a working vehicle, so I was the one who traveled. It was very important to us that we prioritize seeing each other face to face during our engagement, so we sacrificed a lot of time and money to make it happen regularly. Being apart was very hard on our relationship. One Saturday night when I wasn’t visiting, he told me he’d found a new church to check out tomorrow, he’s excited to visit it, and can’t wait to tell me about it. 

I waited. all. day. All day. It was late, after dinner time, when I finally heard back from him. Turns out it’s way in the middle of nowhere service is spotty, and he stayed from the morning mass all the way through dinner. He was excited about the great group of people, the hospitable priest who hosted regular come-as-you-are, quasi-potluck Sunday dinners at the rectory - and the priest offered the Latin Mass. 

Thus began my love affair with the usus antiquor. He went every Sunday, and I went as often as I visited. I started going to the monthly low mass at my own local church. He bought me a missal, and I learned how to use it. I started comparing the old and the new rite, both reflectively and analytically. I started reading about the changes and went down all the rabbit holes regarding Vatican II. (I’d studied Vatican II in college, but it was strictly the texts. Looking back, I see that the professor very carefully walked a fine line of subject matter that allowed him to neuter the “spirit of Vatican II!” version of history without actually getting into what happened before and after the Council. But I digress.) I had to engage, body and soul and mind, with the mass, and my own faith - not just an intellectual study anymore, or something to be endured because that’s just what Catholics on Sunday, I was confronted with the foundational questions: What’s the point of the mass? Why, why any of it? It was a humbling process, a spiritual crucible. All at once I wasn’t just a disembodied intellect asking probing questions, but a soul face-to-face with her Creator, Judge, and Redeemer, applying theology to my own life: what do I owe to God? how do I fulfill that obligation? Where do I encounter Him? What is being asked of me? And miracle of miracles, I had this wonderful community to help me as I went through this process.

Fast forward a number of years: that little church is where we got married, in the old rite, and where our first child was baptized, also in the old rite. Since then we’ve moved twice and had more children, but wherever we go, travel, or plan to move, we go to the TLM. It’s the solid foundation of our family life. Our kids are growing up inundated with beauty, reverence, and a sense of the sacred. We’re very lucky; in our current city, the TLM community has the use of a beautiful church and a rotation of pastors, one of whom also runs the most successful and reverent parish in the city, who offer mass for us every Sunday, some weekdays (at various locations), and most holy days. (And for Holy Week, as a church can have only one holy week and not two in different rites, we are able to make a pilgrimage, as it were, to an FSSP church.)

The ancient rite opened up the presence and person of Christ for me in a way that nothing else, certainly not the NO mass, ever had. I finally understood the point and purpose of the liturgy, and therefore of the whole Christian life. I had to check my pride and my assumptions and my self-satisfaction at the door and be broken open in a brand new way. I had to take Christ on His terms, or not at all. The old rite embodies the truth of the Catholic faith - it lives them, and for the person who embraces them, makes that person to live them. It’s not an add-on to our lives, it doesn’t fit in neatly with the rest of our modern existence. It makes itself the foundation and center of everything, because it is the dwelling place of Christ, and we are meant and made to dwell with Him. 

The old mass and everything that goes with it, all the things that were cut out of the new order when it was invented, the prayers and the obligations and the seasonal markers and the theology, the way of seeing God and ourselves and the Church and the world, is the living tradition of the Catholic faith, our unbroken link to all and everyone that has come before us. In the old calendar, we celebrate feasts on the same days that the great saints of the past did; we sing the same chants and say the same prayers; it’s bigger than we are, and because it’s focused on God, exclusively, and not on ourselves, it heals us and helps us and transforms us in a way that anthropocentric styles of prayer never can. The old life of the Church doesn’t bring God down to our level, but transforms us, raises us up to Him. 

So much of what we take for granted today about the mass, about the faith, so many of the attitudes and assumptions that we have absorbed or been taught, are wrong. Point blank, they are wrong, they are in conflict with what the Church taught for millennia, they are not “of the mind of the Church,” and they have been wreaking havoc on Catholic life for going on a century now. I have made a special study of this history of ideas and their effects over the years, and it is ongoing. The more I learn, the harder I find it to summarize to others just what’s wrong with the way contemporary Catholicism is practiced, and the more profoundly grateful I am that I was brought - by human love - into the fulness of Catholic tradition. Now that I have the benefit of nearly five years of almost exclusive TLM attendance, I wonder how I ever lived without it. I have very strong feelings about it; it’s the driving force behind my desire to evangelize because now I understand what I’m inviting people to share. Not a set of intellectual propositions, not a feeling, but a way of life that boldly and unapologetically has Christ enthroned at its center - a tangible way to see and worship that involves the whole person, body and soul, that makes demands on us. I wish I could bring all of my friends, Catholic and non-Catholic, to a glorious high mass at a beautiful church with all the smells and bells. Because the glory of Christ is there, and His glory is ours.

I went through some tags to find some things I’ve written before: Latin in mass, “NO vs TLM feels”, why I came and stayed for the TLM, book recs, Latin and the vernacular.

If you want to understand more about the TLM, the new books I’m recommending to everyone are Kwasniewski’s Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness and Fr. Jackson’s Nothing Superfluous.

Robert E. Lee and Unrest In Charlottesville - A Retrospective

First, this is madness, I agree that Trump should have reprimanded the White Supremacist group in his first statement, but to ignore the violence on the Anti-fa/BLM group would have been wrong also. Now I am tagged a racist!! With that said, I did watch a detailed documentary where they interviewed people from both sides. Sorry but as “wack-a-doo” the Anti-fa/BLM folk are the other side was down right scary!! While Anti-fa came armed with mace and bats bringing the fight to them, the White Supremacist’s and Nazi’s had AR-15′s and handguns to defend their right to be repugnant. They said they would kill ... WHY??? For a differing opinion? Is that worthy of death? It also discredits the “peaceful protest” thing. 

At the same time I don’t have a problem with Trumps words since he denounced both sides. I remember the old saying “two wrongs don’t make a right” and think how it somehow got confused. Since one wrong believes they are right because of how horrible the view of the “other side” is. 

Sorry I digressed, ultimately the protest was about a statute of Robert E. Lee, a Confederate General. He is a hero to the White Supremacist group since he was one of the top Confederate leaders who in their mind agreed with them and he was evil to the Anti-fa since he represented the ugly oppression of the black slaves. Because both of the skewed views of Robert E Lee, there have been a few quoting him and showing that he was a good man. The favorite to throw in the face of the “left” is :

“In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. “ - Robert E Lee

The next line was omitted but needs to be shown as well:

“The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically.” - Robert E Lee

I think Mr. Lee believed that slavery was better, but I also believe he did not see the atrocities slave owners did. Please also understand that a Bible believer knows the Bible allows slavery which I believe was used to justify the acts, I also believe that they did not learn the full Biblical definition of slave which was really more like indentured servitude, where freedom is possible after 7 years and is a voluntary entry by the “slave”. They ignored the first commandment which was really freedom (search the blog for a full explanation of why or CLICK THIS ARTICLE ... Prager Vid that does a better job). 

I found the letter these quotes came from HERE and found it enlightening. The last line I think says wonders about today’s society:

“Is it not strange that the descendants of those pilgrim fathers who Crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion, have always proved themselves intolerant of the Spiritual liberty of others? “ - Robert E Lee

Anti-Fa is this epitomized! They will shout down any opposing view and destroy property to ensure it never happens. Case in point is Ben Shapiro and Ann Coulter when  they tried to speak at UC Berkeley. Seems like any Trump event is tagged and attacked, who is the real problem here? Are all Trump supporters White Supremacists or are they normal Americans being cast as that for propaganda and evil?

The  White Supremacist ‘s yell their BS and cause chaos by just being, but they can stand on their own and they are shown fools. ARRRGGGHHH no matter what is said, the other side will spin it into a web of BS to support their CRAP!! Sorry, but Trump did say it right and both sides were bad ... although I don’t believe there were many “fine people” on either side though!!

Anyway, Lincoln also addressed this in his second inaugural address:

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes." - Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s words can be used today, although I don’t believe most in either group really know God or follow him closely. Both groups follow their pride and their will above God’s. Whereas Lincoln’s and Lee’s words make me believe both were men of God!! God has been lost to both groups today and shows the need for a revival in the Church. 

Another quote from his address caught my eye:

"Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.""  - Abraham Lincoln

As we fight among ourselves again to a fervor not seen in a while, we have to ask will God allow us to tear ourselves apart and then rebuild a new nation? Or will we be like the Greek or Roman nations and soon be taught in history class.

My view does not dismiss the feelings of blacks who see a flag or a statute erected during the fervor of segregation in the 50′s and 60′s and are enraged. I understand and do agree the monuments should be removed and flags should be changed, I just don’t get the rage of today’s youth who never lived through the riots and the blatant disrespect. Have any today had to drink from a “colored only” fountain? I know many feel disrespect, but this is fading as time goes forwards, we just need to let this die. People’s hearts take time to change (except for those who receive Jesus, then things happen fast) and violent protests get no one on anyone’s side. Maybe instead of macing a Nazi, we should show them the love of Jesus and change a heart!!

To kind of close thing up with this ramble. I notice my view on the “Google Manifesto” received sharp criticism from some. Again maybe I just don’t read “between the lines” well, but while I took no offense a friend who engaged in my folly pointed out why they were upset at the memo. They said women have been told  that they are not suited for or are unable to do because of their sex. To which I pointed out fighting Hulk Hogan and the WWF was not suited for women. Their response was “women can do whatever they want, include enter the ring with Hulk Hogan if they want to .“ To which I said “then the WWF would have to be fake!” I guess I don’t get it ... President Trump called it like it was and I believe the words of Lincoln and Lee ring as true today and they did over a 100 years ago.