How can I say thank you? How does one High five with printed words? Steve, I just finished this, and maybe I will comment a lengthier reply later, but for now, I just want to say, you rock, man. That's telling it like it really is, and I loved every word. I agree with pretty much most of it too.

I subscribed because I want to support you and also because you’re helping me so much. Reading your words is like you took the disorganized, half-conscious, rambling incoherencies floating around in my brain and wrote them down in a thoughtful, intelligent format. While I can’t relate with every detail of your journey (was never almost kidnapped by a religious order and pressured to become a priest 😂), the resulting crisis of faith is pretty much the same. All the guilt, the rules, the scrupulosity, the “us versus them” mentality that fueled every discussion of liturgy and hierarchy. All of it stinks. All these years of thinking as long as I attended the Latin Mass, my faith and spirituality would surely grow. But it hasn’t. Why? Whose fault is that? Is it all mine, or have i been trained to be too reliant on the rubrics, the letter of the law and not the spirit? Speaking of spirit, I’ve been conditioned to look down on Catholics who say Holy Spirit and not Holy Ghost because Holy Ghost is “traditional.” I have recently begun deliberately saying Holy Spirit and it feels liberating because, news flash, it doesn’t matter.

“I have to be honest: when I look at the Catholic Church, I feel this weird sense of displacement, like when you drive by a place you used to live, but see someone else’s car in the driveway, someone else’s stuff in the yard. It was home, but now it’s not.”

Yes, yes, yes. The way I describe this is that i feel homeless. No home in the church, no home in the world, no home even in my own family. It’s rough.

Please keep writing. We’ll keep reading.

So much to say. But I will spare you most of it. Honestly, I am completely heartbroken for you, and I will be praying for you and your family. I don’t mean that in a cloying or haughty sense. You’ve been put through the ringer. I have plenty of my own stories, though none probably as bad as yours. Having spent five years in the seminary, I too found that I met some of the best and some of the worst people I have ever known in that context. It didn’t seem to matter which you were when it came to suitability for ordination, and I mean this for both seminarians who saw themselves as liberal and those who saw themselves as conservatives. I also have a lot of residual guilt from having left the seminary. And I also have a lot of fear associated with my Catholicism. From the bottom of my soul I know what it’s like to have a relationship with the Church as an institution that seems eager to take but reluctant to give, and not just money, but time, years of my life, the prime of my life, and then tell me as a consolation, "thank you for your yes".

I feel like I know you a lot better than I actually do because we have shared some of the same struggles. In reality, we have exchanged a few emails. But, I just want to tell you to be honest about where your search takes you. I want to tell you not to leave the Catholic Church, because I do still believe that it is the only Church. What else am I supposed to tell you? I suspect that is not what you want to hear. I know that. At least intellectually, I understand why you are leaving. You are not the first person I have known who has left the Church because they felt manipulated and used by people who saw themselves as conservatives/traditionalists. I understood why she left and has no desire to come back and I understand why you feel that way too. But I also know that some of the people I have watched leave became completely unmoored once they did leave, and ultimately stop looking for God at all. Thomas Merton (a checkered man, I know), said that though we may not always know how to please God, a sincere desire to please Him is itself pleasing to Him. Please don’t disappear into the abyss of our present dystopia. It may be horrible inside a Catholic Neverland, but it isn’t any better out there either. Most of all, I hope that God leads you home, leads all of us home. He does love us. That’s what He really wants, and in the end finding our way home is all that matters. Please don’t forget us in your wanderings.

Thanks for writing this. I have experienced some parallels to you and I find myself in a similar relationship to the Church.

For me, I’ve said it’s Catholicism’s or atheism. All else is a cartoon parody of Catholicism. What the hell do I do when Catholicism is a parody of itself? I feel like I’m hanging from the last branch as I fall from a tree.

My wife’s father died last year without access to the sacraments. Last year, our newborn was denied Baptism from our diocesan Latin Mass, from the FSSP, and from the Norbertines. The Norbertines were hearing confessions at their abby at this time, so we could carry our baby before them for that, but they refused to splash any water on him. I believe it was cowardice because Baptism is a sacrament with a paper trail and they didn’t want a headache from a local Bishop. Ultimately, I called the SSPX. Fr. Burfitt, the prior, called me the next day and our baby was Baptized the following Saturday. There was no trad litmus test, no interview of our prior Catholic experience, nor a request of commitment to them. They didn’t even charge a fee for Baptism or the candle. We were so appreciative, that we were generous with a donation.

We’ve been going to the SSPX for a year now. I’m still waiting for the reveal of awful that seems to always happen as soon as I get settled in a position in relation to the Church. It hasn’t happened yet, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised so far. It’s more normal than my diocesan Latin Mass. Our priest focuses on catechesis and his sermons are well prepared and deal with personal holiness and practical tools that we can apply in our day to day lives. He doesn’t serve scandal-porn or rail against Vatican II/Novus Ordo. Our six year old daughter is in an incredible catechism program and made her first Confession and first Communion last Saturday and Sunday. With as good as it has been there for us, I find myself even angrier than before. My daughters catechism program reveals just how bullshit my religious education was. I knew it was bad, but it’s become startlingly more clear. I’m increasingly angry at the bishops and diocesan churches. I’m angry at my my diocesan Latin Mass and the Norbertine Latin Masses for all of the outrage mongering, which proved empty when we needed them. I feel alone in a church of 1.2 billion. The surprising normality that we’ve experienced at the SSPX makes me angry because we are now schismatics in the eyes of people we once respected. What the fuck? This isn’t what being Catholic is supposed to be, but it’s my last hope. Every time I think I e found my footing in the Church, the rug gets pulled out from underneath and I find myself segregated into a smaller portion of the Church. I went from non-practicing, to Novus Ordo Normie-Catholic, to conservative Catholic, to traditionalist, to whatever it is that I am now. I would never be anything retarded, like a sede, but I sometimes wonder how long until this rug gets pulled out. Is there anywhere else to land? I don’t think there is, so I pray the rug stays put.

I don't think we were meant to live this way.

It's not enough to have the world swirling around, but we have to deal with our ship prying off the deck plates.

What do you do when you're surrounded?

All I can manage is to hunker down. I've said over and over that this year has been a revelation. An unveiling.

I can't argue with anything you've written. God knows I'm struggling and I've had the luxury of avoiding every media story about the Church.

I hope you are able to obtain the sacraments for your children. I'm praying for peace for you and your family and for all of us who are trying to hang on.

Dear Steve, I hope I can offer you some encouragement. In the meantime, I offer you assurances of my prayers. I did not grow up Catholic and by the time I was 30 I had made a total shipwreck of my life. But along the way, Christ had manifested his love for me in such a profound way that I knew He was real no matter what my circumstances or my thoughts or feelings told me when I was drowning in the consequences of my sin and of the false beliefs I had because I had no good faith formation. I experienced unbearable suffering and thankfully, because I knew on a profound level of God's love for me, I was given the grace to persist in prayer, to not take "No!" for an answer, to keep knocking, knocking knocking like the importunate woman. I have found over and over again Jesus is faithful. His promises are true. That He loves us even when we are most unlovely and undeserving. I am a new Catholic, having entered the church in 2012 and I had to learn about all this mediation stuff, about priests in persona Christi, accepting teaching about papal infallibility etc. etc. Even under Benedict XVI it was extremely hard because all I could see were the warts, the evils, the cowardice of the institutional church. So much easier as an evangelical to believe in a free-floating pure mystical church that doesn't have these tares in it. But, with the help of Our Lady, I assented. Then came Pope Francis who seemed to be tearing down everything I was taught I had to believe to become Catholic. He seemed like a wrecking ball swinging back and forth destroying the pillars of the sacraments. It was anguishing and terribly confusing. At some point, I had to chose not to be confused because confusion is not of God. That didn't mean I had the answers, but that I had to rest in a state of unknowing. God pointed me to Psalm 131, "I am not high minded, I have no proud looks, I do not exercise myself in matters that are too high for me." I stopped focusing on Pope Francis, the goings on in the hierarchy, though I was following things out of the corner of my eye. I disciplined myself not to react, not to let these things disturb the peace I had in Christ. If I lost that peace, I would repent of whatever judgments, resentment, frustration, worry that I had fallen prey to. When churches shut down because of this "pandemic" and Catholics were deprived of the sacraments, I quipped, "we are all evangelicals now" because it seemed even the bishops were no longer saying receiving Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was essential to our salvation. Yet, the evangelicals were abandoning even their precept of forsaking not the assembling of yourselves together except for a few notable exceptions now facing charges in Canada. Thankfully I go to a small parish where the priests have made every possible effort to ensure we have access to Holy Communion, Confession and so on. But the evangelical message about a personal relationship with Jesus at the heart of the faith---I am so, so glad I had experienced that before becoming Catholic because it infused with light and love everything else I had to accept in the fullness of the faith. And thus when seeing the sinfulness of those who are supposed to be our shepherds, our mediators of Christ, I can mourn that but it does not destroy my faith, because it is experiential, it is a supernatural gift. I believe you have a prophetic gifting, which allows you to see with a clearer eye than most both what's wrong out there in the church but also the ability to admit what is wrong with yourself. You remind me of the publican, "Lord have mercy on me a sinner!" I pray that God will "repent you," will bring you to a place where nothing you to do to save yourself works, nothing you have relied on helps, so that in this brokenness and suffering, your cry to God becomes one wholehearted wordless cry for mercy and that you don't stop until He comes to you, bringing sweet tears of repentance and the joy of the Lord and an awareness that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

I've been reflecting in this throughout my day. We never talk about the theology of the Church being the mystical body of Christ. Instead we see it as a library of dogmas, doctrines, clergy, professors, etc. All those things are part of the life of the Church and serve the Church but the mystical body of Christ is something far more substantial than all that. Those are expressions of the truth but the truth is spoken and received by persons starting with the Divine Persons and not by synods or jurisdictions or Denzinger no matter how honorable those things might be. The Church isn't movements; it isn't trad or NO or conservative, etc.; the Church is the people grafted into Christ. For example, I get pissed when people say Biden isn't Catholic because XYZ; he's Catholic because he's baptized; he will be saved or damned as a Catholic; I'm not saying he's a good Catholic mind you. We need to stop policing all the time and instead need anyone faith marked by prayer, community, the Gospel, evangelization, and the like. The Church needs to vitality again and your struggle is doing that; you're stripping the layers and getting down to what's real which shows because you're reaching people at a deep level and struggling with Christ Himself.

I could share so many details of my experiences the last several years but I'll sum it all up with the word lonely. Some of that is my own thing, I am not easily outgoing, I struggle to socialize despite wanting to, I'm shy and a bit awkward. Also, if you want to be in a Catholic bubble and part of the social team, you have to know or be related to the right people and live in the right neighborhood or else you end up being on the rim of things - well-liked but only occassionally remembered. My wife and I are also raising a kid with developmental disabilities which leaves us even more cutoff and even more struggling because we just don't fit in. I've struggled with the institutional part of the Church too and have so since my conversion. I'm furious that so few have cared about the soul or well-being of people like my parents who try to be good Christians but just lack formation - the institutional Church has abandoned them. I'm furious that in addition to being lonely, I'm also subjected to the banal and ugly in mass though that has changed from parish to parish. I've struggled with/against Christ too. I have felt very few consolations; my blessings have largely been the type where, I guess I'm thankful I have 2 legs and an ok salary but nothing special either materially or spiritually has stuck out despite praying/pleading for something more. I know this is vague and impressionistic, I don't write about personal things well. I suppose I'm just saying that the assault on my faith and on my person has come from all sides. I believe in God, in Christ, the saints, the sacraments et al. but I also doubt and I tell Christ those doubts and at times I rail at him when I'm especially angry. I also admit to him the days when I just can't bring myself to pray. I think I feel the need to write these few disorganized thoughts as a break from my own loneliness and struggles and to speak to someone with similar experiences. If you're poor, doubting, mentally ill, abused, traumatized, or otherwise small/meek, then expect to be run down by the very smiling faces that claim they are looking out for your kind. Somewhere in that, I hope, is grace and love that are not yet clear and so I hold on. I don't hold on to the novus ordo or the Trid or to low t tradition but to Christ, sacraments, scripture, and Tradition but lived in a small, personal, oftentimes lonely way. I live on the edge of despair and my own cowardice and the abuse and invalidation from others but at least things seem real here. You're scarred but that's good; in the vulnerability, you can actually love and begin to check your worse impulses; the strong, on the other hand, they abuse and take advantage without even knowing it. Be small and be with others who are small wherever you find them. Try to pray, even angry prayers; if you're angry then you actually love; otherwise, you'd just walk away. I'm praying for you. Stay weak and close to Christ; it's enough.

Man, Steve, I wish I could buy you a couple of beers, some table-side guacamole, and a nice, tender flank steak (medium rare, of course).

My wife and I are converts—we came into the Church in November of 2017. The honeymoon is over, and I am profoundly discouraged much of the time; but, I’m learning now to see this disillusionment as a gift, and that gift is a call to return to my first love, Jesus.

I think often of Benedict XVI’s words in the Introduction to Deus Caritas Est: “We have come to believe in God's love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”

My prayer of late has been simple: “I want more of you, Lord. I want to encounter you, again, and again.” His response seems to be to remind me of his words in the Beatitudes, where he tells us that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness “will be filled.” And then I confess to him that I’m afraid I’m not hungry or thirsty enough. And if I’m not mistaken, I hear him say, “My grace is sufficient for you.”

God’s grace is sufficient for you, too, Steve.

Give me a heads-up next time you pass through the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Bring your whole family. Dinner and beers on me.

Incredible piece, Steve. Thanks for being so open with your story. I haven’t experienced anything like what you have but it really helps me understand your perspective.

The thing I kept saying to myself as I got deeper into this insanity you’ve written is, “surely he’s going to lead us out of this pit, enlighten us with his new direction,” sort of the old dangle ‘em over the edge of the cliff then reel them back in with the solution. But no. So where do you go from here?

My wife and I raised our daughters pretty successfully in our NO parish and now they’re adults and the COVID dispensations and closed parishes appear to have ruined all that. I have one eye on the TLM as something I want to explore more, but you make some interesting points about that, which give me pause.

I feel like God is leading you through this even if you don’t. Your reaction to your priest seems totally appropriate and your snapping I think will bear fruit. Keep praying for guidance and following your instincts.

Oh goodness, this captures much of what I’ve felt over the past few years, especially the sense of loneliness - where is the *sane* Church? I love the TLM and believe that Vatican II went profoundly astray, but I am not a so-called “traditionalist” for similar reasons you outline here. But there is nowhere to turn for folks like us. Everything is about tribalism these days.

As Michelle in these comments pointed out, this past year or so has been an unveiling - and I could not agree more, though I think the unveiling started even before the pandemic. And what has been revealed about the country, the West more generally, and the Church, has been so disillusioning. I admit that I too - like the traditionalists you mention - hope and pray sometimes that these may be the last days, because I don’t want things to continue down the path they seem to be going, not only in the church, but also more broadly in the culture.

To keep from despairing, I find that I have to just focus on the small graces - these days those are seeing friends in-person again after more than a year, being able to go in-person exercise classes at a studio again, and working on reading the entire Bible for the first time. The Psalms have been a balm, as has reading the rest of the Old Testament. (For instance lately, while reading Exodus, I’ve been reflecting upon how lonely Moses must have been - even his own brother, Aaron, the high priest, didn’t seem to truly “get it” sometimes!) But at times it can be hard to find those small graces; sometimes God hides Himself from us. I don’t know what to do in those moments other than to try to persevere and beg Him not to let me lose my faith.

Thank you for sharing your hard-won wisdom with us, though I’m so very sorry for the pain you have had to go through to obtain it.

Oh Steve, everything has changed ...and nothing has changed. Nicholas Black Elk. Read everything you can about him to come to understand how to cope and live with the "religion" who came to "save the Indian soul" (boarding schools, etc). THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for baring your soul in this because now I know I am not going insane. All the saints were on the fringe. Persevere. God loves you and is now showing you how much. (see that Man upon the cross?) God's blessings to you and your dear family!

I generally like you, Steve. You seem conservative but you're fairly moderate. I have had some bad experiences with priests in and out of the confessional. A Jesuit told me once I was to blame for all of my suffering in my life even though the conversation had turned to abuse that I experienced growing up. And he told me that my expectations of God were too high. I didn't even know that was possible. I had also made the mistake of going to this Jesuit to confession once last year. He got huffy with me because my sins weren't juicy enough for him. No one was in the confessional line so I'm not sure what urgent matters he needed to attend to on a Saturday afternoon. The real problem I've had since entering the Church has been other lay people. I'm too conservative for the bongo drum and rainbow flag parishes and I'm too liberal for the TLM crowd because I lived a secular life for so long and I still like pop culture (what's wrong with liking Alice in Chains and Gregorian Chant?). And most parishes with many families aren't welcoming to single people like myself. My archdiocese dispensed the obligation for Mass and I took advantage of the opportunity because I think if I hadn't I would have been in mortal sin because I would have stopped attending on my own. The not finding a place for myself and my broken relationship with God was going to lead me to despair. I've been able to find a no-frills parish. The pastor was my professor 15 years ago and he's fairly sound with his homilies. Plus, there's no parish cliques. Don't give up on the Church. And don't go Orthodox. They have their own set of problems. My father was Serbian Orthodox. A majority of priests in the Orthodox Church come from the old country and with them comes their political platform and corruption from their home countries.

Steve, thanks for your honesty, I've been reading your stuff for a while, but have never commented with a note of support for you, and so it must seem that the weirdo's of the Catholic internet are winning, its not true, normal people have better things to do, but appreciate what your doing, and pray for you. Keep the faith, I have similar concerns, but my job isn't in Catholic media, so it doesn't bother me as much, maybe step back a little, and I think you will see that you can keep the faith, but the tribalism won't bother you

Steve: Thanks for writing this. You are not alone in your struggle with our seemingly imposible situation. Your friend is more wise than even he may understand. The falsehood must be stripped away. Beyond all that, is a God who loves you and very much seeks to "fix" you. To make you whole. His Son is the messenger, and the way, calling us to Him.

I pray for you and your family every day. Courage and peace.

JT

Hi Steve, we overlapped at The Highlands for about 6 months; my parents pulled me out 2/3 of the way thru my sophomore year (Thank God).

I can relate to so much of what you’re saying. I was attending a TLM locally for a while. I was drawn to the recent liturgy and music, the proper attire, etc. Many of my kids’ homeschooled friends attended. There were quirks but I looked past them.

Then Covid shut down the churches. When they re-opened, I attended the second weekend it was available. As I exited the main church, a woman tried to give me a lace face mask, basically a mantilla for my face, to stick it to the government or something. I stammered that I had high risk family members at home (elderly parents, kid with congenital heart defect). She went on to tell me that the young man filming the mass the for the livestream was a “Communist” because he panned out to the congregation — during the Procession — which showed apparently 2/3 of the congregants unmasked. I almost developed whiplash from how quickly this crowd adopted the “my body, my choice position.”

I have them all hidden from my newsfeed so that I can’t see their inevitable support for the priest who shall not be named.

There’s krazy on all sides.

And you are spot on about the LARP-ing.

I told a college classmate who went on to become a Cistercian monk that often times, I want to go to church alone in a cave. He said he’d celebrate mass for me there, and then leave me alone. If we ever get that figured out, you guys can come. But you can’t talk to me. Lol.

PS - I know some other Highlands alums would like to connect with you. I signed up for this for a month specifically so I could comment.