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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'm writing this about 8 or 9 hours later, and after reading all of the comments from others. Like you and many if not all of them, I've got stories to tell. Mine differ in only in time and place, it seems.
I'm a cradle Catholic too. I am, however, the only one left in my family that practices from what was a mixed-marriage, easy-cheesy liberal Catholicism. Around the age of 12, I was flung right into a situation similar to what you faced on World Youth day, when Pope John Paul visited my country, and the school dragged us into BC Place Stadium to be part of what was an ugly, frightening act of public idolatry.
I somehow kept searching for the truth, and eventually, not long after leaving home as a young adult, I found Catholic Tradition. But it wasn't the end of all my problems.
My time in the Canadian Military revealed the genuine face of the world as it is very early in my career, and the Chaplains that were assigned to us for sacramental and pastoral care of us were to me the hard evidence that couldn't be hidden or ignored: that the majority of the “mainstream” Catholic Church was sick, dysfunctional and about as Catholic as Luther's boots.
At a time in our lives, when as young men and men and women we were facing the ugly realities of things like rape gangs, child trafficking, mass graves and serial murder on an industrial scale, we couldn't look to Chaplains for care and guidance, because they weren't there. If they were, all they wanted to be was some bizarre form of social worker. Somehow, through all that, I kept going.
Every return back to Canada from somewhere “out there” deepened my sense of alarm at the general unawareness of most people, and their almost willing ignorance of what was happening to the church, even in their own parish. Decades before it became a thing, I knew the media was lying and distorting the news. The realities I faced on the ground wherever we were deployed never matched the story told by others at home.
What was almost the last straw for me was when, on a deployment a few years before I retired, we waited for hours before leaving on a mission tasking for a chaplain to arrive at our FOB from Headquarters so that we could receive the Sacraments. When the Chaplain finally showed up, it wasn’t a priest. It was female Captain.
Long story short, we left without confessions and receiving Holy Communion. Later that day our patrol encountered an IED, and four men died without receiving the Sacraments. The only time we would see the priest we expected was later, at the ramp ceremony. We never him again for the rest of the tour. Nobody wants to face eternity and their Last Judgement this way. But the Chaplains were never taken to task, and nobody cared.
I’ve been part of a diocesan TLM for three years since my wife and I moved to the city where I live. In all that time, I still know only a handful of people’s names, and as the only injured veteran in the parish that I know of that has actually killed the enemies of the One True Faith, I can’t tell you how lonely it is to go there, where most people don’t even know my name, or even seem to want to. And if they do know it, and that I’m a veteran of the wars in the Middle East, I might as well be a shadow and a thought to them. I’m either invisible, or frightening. Either way, I’m not going to be invited over for dinner.
My wife and I faithfully go, mass after mass, invisible, to receive the Sacraments in a church full of brothers and sisters who are not brothers and sisters. How many times now have I tried to start a conversation with someone I’ve been praying beside for years, only to have them ask me if I’m new to the parish?
Yes, I know you are speaking truth when you say that Traditionalism is not real.
My wife and I are expecting a true miracle of God soon. The baby will come in November, and I hope that we won’t encounter the problems you are experiencing right now, but we are preparing for the worst anyway. No matter where we look, the first and last thing we encounter most of the time is the Corporate face of Catholic Church, Inc, LLP.
Our personal faith has turned away from this business-like entity, and worked on developing our inner faith and home life in order to persevere. Our faith is a lot more portable and flexible, teachable and strong. We read, we study, we discuss, we pray. We go on with our lives, and if we can’t receive the Sacraments in Church at Mass, we pray the Spiritual Communion.
Steve, between my wife and I alone, we have all the trade skills necessary to build a parish church from scratch, but we can’t fix stupid, and we have no idea how to train and teach people and priests to avoid becoming addicted to willful stupidity and ignorance. But like you, when it comes to getting what we asked for, we get angry when we encounter situations like you did with your parish priest. And when it happens, our modus operandi is: if I can’t get your respect, you’re fear will do nicely.
So bravo to you and Jamie. We have your back, and you’re in our prayers. Stay angry, cool guy.
Joe, there's so much in your comment to reflect on, but this was just brutal:
"Long story short, we left without confessions and receiving Holy Communion. Later that day our patrol encountered an IED, and four men died without receiving the Sacraments. The only time we would see the priest we expected was later, at the ramp ceremony. We never him again for the rest of the tour. Nobody wants to face eternity and their Last Judgement this way. But the Chaplains were never taken to task, and nobody cared."
I'm sure those of you who were deployed without the sacraments you wanted tried to make your peace with God as you headed out. Is it just me, or would many traditionalists assume those men wound up in hell, even though they sought out the remedy?
We said a Rosary together, before leaving. And an older soldier among us led everyone in a Spiritual Communion, and we all said an Act of Contrition.
Every time we went outside the razor wire and reinforced walls, we were afraid, but we went anyway. All we had was hope, really, and maybe it was just a fool's hope, but we had it, and each other. And maybe I'm still just a fool, but I still have hope, for me, and for them too.
And I never got used to missing them for long, and so much. They were my brothers, and many of them were as dear to me as if they were my own sons. We lived together far away from safety and peace, and in very dangerous places for many years, and we got used to it, but we never got used to coming home to find that our place there was taken. I never learned how to unlearn all the truth I learned, so I never got used to how lonely it feels to be surrounded by the truth, beauty and reverence of tradition, and feeling as invisible to the flesh and blood people around me as their own guardian angels are. None of us that go to war or face real evil can ever really come home again. There is no home to come back to.
It hurts me so bad, even all these years later, not because I believe my brothers are in hell, but because the people we needed most to give us the little we ever asked for in return for risking everything seemed to be trying to put us there. The laity we knew, and the priests. And never really knowing why.
Would many traditionalists assume they wound up in hell? Oh, yes. I got that from many I spoke to about this and other stories.
I used to hope that if people back home just knew what truly happened, and who did it, then maybe enough people could join together to help change it so it wouldn't happen anymore. When I kept getting these reactions -- these assumptions -- from traditional laity and clerics about my friends, and about me … well. It stopped me. I stopped trying to tilt at the windmill.
Oh, I forgive them. Sure I do, I don't want to carry that crap on my soul or in my head. I forgive the priests too. After all, how is a guy who has near-zero actual life experience supposed to give advice and spiritual direction to somebody like me?
I talked to a priest after my first brutal experience with mass graves. I was shaken, shell-shocked and needed counselling and advice, but in the end I had to stop going to see him because HE was so shaken and shell-shocked by just meeting me and listening to what I saw and experienced that he wound up in therapy himself. I feel sorry for the guy, but now what do I do?
Like you, there's a lot about this that I can't fathom. I'm still a pretty bright guy, even after years of head injuries, but I gotta wonder: why it's not okay to say out loud that I think the guy who told Steve Skojec of all people I know that his kids couldn't have the Sacraments because he didn't think their parents were -- Rich enough? Catholic enough? -- is a clueless moron? A corporate pipeline flunky? A bad priest who apparently was too important, tired or "busy" to bother keeping in touch and giving a shit? (I've got a repertoire of cusswords that can peel the barnacles off of Luther's ass, but I will spare you).
I'm working as hard as I can looking for answers. Looking for the right action to take. I'm not going to give up. It makes me furious, all this shallow, beige, death of a thousand cuts evil inflicted on good people like you and Jamie that never deserved it, and I want to find a way to stop it, because that's what I did my whole life.
I never had the kind of family that would stand up and protect me from bullies and thugs, so I did the best I could on my own. I never became the world's best at it or anything, but I got good enough to win more fights than I lost. I'm tired, and I'm at my limit sometimes, but I'm not going to stop.
I think the most important thing you've done for me, Steve, is that, even though we have never met in person, you've acted as only a real man would, by writing and reaching out with genuine fellowship and truth. It has been a great relief to me to know I'm not all alone, and, if I reach back out there that somebody will answer, who is thinking the same things, living with the same fears, pain and doubt, and like me, still gives a damn anyway. Not because it's traditional, but because that's the right thing to do. Not because of some rule or rubric, because this is just a good way to be.
I'm at peace with God, don't misunderstand me. I can be, because after all these years, He still hasn't ordered my death, and keeps sending me people and things to show me where to go next.
Damn it, Joe. I've got a good imagination, and I can apply it and some empathy to get just a peek at what you're going through, but you're in the deep muck of the swamp, and have been for a long time. I don't envy any man that.
I feel a strong kinship to you, even though I know these are just words floating around on the internet.
I'm really glad you're here. I hope you'll stick around.
I've had a similar experience but as a therapist rather than military. I see a lot of the fallout from really dark things like rape, abuse, killing, etc. It's hard to meet genuine friends and I get known as the therapist who people occasionally ask questions about one thing or another or they tell me their theories about the mind. When you're not like everyone else, it shows. My dad was military; he got on well in my childhood parish where a lot of the guys were WW2 vets but that's changing for him as more of them are dying.
Thank you. I can certainly relate to everything you said in your comment from earlier. I can guess from this one too that it's pretty tough where you're at, trying to do that job. Having been on both the receiving end and the giving end of counselling, I know it is a lot of being stuck between a brick wall and a hard place. Take care, and God bless.
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.
There's a lot here, and I appreciate it, but I want to address the comment about leaving.
I'm not sure I'm leaving. I'm not sure I even could. I don't know how to root out decades of programming going back to before I can remember. The Church, and her threat of damnation if I go anywhere else, has claws so deep in me that the fear never truly rests.
I *want* to leave. I *want* to be done. I am disgusted through and through.
But the fear that I'm wrong, the fear that all the bad stuff that's happened to me has clouded my vision, the thought that maybe my friend is right and I was never really taught the right things after all (even though they've been confirmed over and over by priests and other Catholics over the years) all weigh on me.
If the Church really is what she claims to be, I need to be a part of it. But I need to find a way to be a real, meaningful part of it. I need to find a way to be spiritually nourished by it. And I'm not.
Being a Catholic all these years taught me lots of rules to follow and I've had tons of theological debates and all of that is great, but when was someone going to teach me how to know and love a God who feels to me as though he's on the other side of a nearly-infinite, unbridgeable chasm?
I don't know that I have ever truly loved God. I have only feared him. And there comes a point in time where fear ceases to be enough to keep you in your place. You want to tell the guy who has had a gun to your head all that time, "You know what? Just go ahead and shoot. Even that would be better than all this sitting around being bound to a chair forever."
I have a toxic relationship with the Church for various reasons, and what I feel as though I need is distance. I actually hate that the Church doesn't make a provision for that. The Sunday obligation is a do-or-die proposition; go and you might be saved, don't and you'll surely be damned.
But sometimes in a relationship you need some time apart. That's what I was trying to do this past year, making the most of the dispensation. And because I did it, I got another knife in the back from the one priest who should have been most concerned about why I wasn't there.
So I don't know what to do, but for now I feel like flipping off the gunman. I need time to process, and that may just have to mean honoring the divine precept from home for a while.
What is keeping me holding on is distance. No Catholic media. No online homilies. Nothing. We are part of a Novus Ordo parish for various reasons. Our dispensation was just lifted on Pentecost.
We're a Catholic parish in the middle of the Protestant south and the worship preferences of our older parishioners reflect that. I ignore it all. It's easier for me to do now because I've gone through a four-year Bible study with a lot of older parishioners and I can see that they are all faithful Catholics even though their hymn preferences are at odds with my own.
I ignore it all. We receive the Eucharist. We receive absolution for our sins.
Formation is reading our daily readings together in the morning, praying the rosary together. Reading about Church history to the kids. Ignoring every story about the Church hierarchy at all levels and remaining focused on receiving the Eucharist, doing good, and avoiding evil.
I ignore it all. I am a medieval peasant. I don't know who the pope is. I see my bishop every few years at best.
I have never had that overwhelming, personal feeling of love either. I hope one day that it happens, but I'm not an emotional person. I don't know if it's something that's possible for me in this world.
Thanks for the clarification and sorry for the presumption. There is a lot here that I can second: "But I need to find a way to be a real, meaningful part of it. I need to find a way to be spiritually nourished by it. And I'm not." And also: "I don't know that I have ever truly loved God." I cannot tell you how many times I have said “Jesus I love You” but then had to add “but really I don’t and that is an aspiration. Someday, Jesus, I hope to love You.”
The COVID blanket dispensation has been a blessing for you then. I may be mistaken, but I believe that it is also possible for any parish priest (pastor) to dispense from the Church precept of attending Mass on Sunday for a good reason (though no one can dispense from the obligation to keep holy the Sabbath, which I don’t suppose you are interested in anyway). I am sure you have run through all of the various possibilities in your head. But maybe register at your geographic parish and approach the pastor with your situation. Perhaps you can continue to get some space while also allowing your children the sacraments.
I love you as a Christian brother. I have benefited greatly from being able to read your writing. If there is any way I can help you, please let me know. Above all, know of my prayers.
Hey Man. Just subscribed and look forward to reading some of your more esoteric writing. I’m a recovering Catholic myself. I still go to mass and the Sacrament of Penance. I’m a recovering seminarian as well, having spent 12 years in seminary. High school, college and theology. Left right before I was supposed to be ordained to diaconate. That’s a story in itself. But this isn’t about me. We are the walking wounded brother. So many battle stories and scars from this entity that is the Church. Saints and sinners all of us. You don’t need anyone’s permission to take a sabbatical from the Church. My suggestion is to live your life but never stop trying to be a saint. Just be the best version of who you can be RIGHT now. I think that’s all that God ever expects from us. Heal. Just take time to heal. Reconnect with the Source. You are dealing with some serious trauma and it’s going to take a long time. Maybe years. Probably the rest of your life. Not to be discouraging but we are on the Via Dolorosa. That’s just life. The Church will wait for you. She always will. I am still dealing with my own trauma. I still don’t know if I want to give the Church another opportunity to hurt me either. But I found that keeping Yeshua at the center of it all to be key. I am slowly discovering Him again. Reading the NT. St Paul. I’ve also watched all three seasons of the Chosen. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend. When we allow the Gospels to truly transform us, when we truly allow Yeshua to become the Master of our life, all the rest falls into place. Everything else is just straw. Love and mercy is key. Compassion is what is needed, especially with ourselves. We must forgive ourselves. That is one of the bravest acts we can perform. We must not only love Christ but we must love ourselves as He loves us. We must treat ourselves as He would treat us. Allow yourself to be one of those broken people in the Gospels who needed His healing. Maybe we all are Mary of Magdala. She was possessed by demons. She was a sinner but Yeshua never looked away from her. He took her woundedness and her hurt into himself. Allow Yeshua to do that for you. Give him your hurt, your trauma, and your wounds. Allow the healer to heal you. Scream, cry, weep but call out to him. He is there with you and He will raise you up. That is Good News! If we focus enough on Him then He can transform our rage, fear, and anger. He will redeem that. You can no longer stop being Catholic than you can stop breathing air. The brainwashing is just too powerful. I’m only half serious about that. It is in our bones brother. No matter how far we might run, the faith is in our bones. Even if you became a raging pagan, the Catholic sensibility will never leave you. You have looked through that lens for too long. You may have experienced a cult in the Legion and the FSSP but your worldview will always be undeniably Catholic to some point. I pray that you will be led to wherever God is calling you but always use the tools of discernment. Find a solid place perhaps to do an Ignatian silent retreat. Go through the Exercises. A good one will break you and build you back up again. I need to do the same myself. The Church needs men like us more than ever. WE need to be the Shepherds now to protect the sheep from the Wolves. I pray that whatever happens you find the peace only Yeshua can give. Shalom!
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.
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.
It does. It feels like I'm systematically being pushed out.
As an aside, despite praising them, I know my experience with the SSPX is anecdotal and very limited. Have you considered going there, since it seems like your traditional liturgy options are limited? I'd be curious to see what your experience of them would be.
I have a similar World Youth Day story, except you were a greater man than I was.
I went to the Toronto World Youth Day with my parish at the time. On the day of the Papal Mass, members of our group complained so much about the heavy rain that our chaperones directed us back to the bus, before the Mass had even started. I was 18 or 19 then. I disagreed with them and should have resisted more than I did. I should have stayed, but I capitulated and returned to the bus. I remember looking through the bus window, thinking what a waste of time the whole trip had been and how pointless were the efforts of our fundraising and preparations. We, of course, managed the time for a shopping trip at the Eaton Center and took pictures on the glass floor of the CN tower while in Toronto.
Once we returned home, a few of us were asked to speak after Mass about our pilgrimage. I became a fraud and a liar as I stood before the parish and spoke of the "tranformative" experience. We omitted the fact that we failed to fulfill the singular purpose of the pilgrimage, for which many there had donated. I felt terrible guilt, looking into their eyes.
At this parish, we had an old gay man named Lance who was always drunk and would regularly position himself to just happen be where the youth group was. Once when I was sick, he told me that I needed to "get rip-roaring drunk and sit naked in a sauna to sweat it all out". That's the least of the creepy things Lance said to the young men there. I was told that our priest had told him to stay away from us, but that was never enforced and he never left us alone.
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.
Very well said Deborah. Like you, I am also convert from Protestantism (2015). It has only occurred to me somewhat recently, through much sin, suffering and darkness, that for most of my almost 6 years as a Catholic I have made an idol of the Church. I slowly realized at some point that only Christ himself is the Way, not the institutional Church (important though it is). I came across this quote from St. Augustine's Confessions yesterday:
"It is one thing to survey our peaceful homeland from a wooded height but fail to find the way there, and make vain attempts to travel through impassable terrain, while fugitive deserters marshaled by the lion and the dragon obstruct and lurk in ambush; and quite another to walk steadily in the way that leads there, along the well-built road opened up by the heavenly emperor, where no deserters from the celestial army dare commit robbery, for they avoid that way like torment."
Steve, perhaps (like me) you have been making "vain attempts to travel through impassable terrain" by focusing so much on the Church, its bad shepherds, it myriad of serious problems, and even on its dogmas and precepts, to the exclusion of our Lord himself. As your essay so painfully makes clear, that path is where the "fugitive deserters" of the evil one lurk. But the "well-built road opened up by the heavenly emperor" is Christ himself, and only He can get us home. Yes, the Church is, and provides, the means to follow Him on that way, but it is only the bride, not the bridegroom. He opened my eyes recently to what I should have known all along: Love God, Love your neighbor; Jesus will take care of the rest.
Steve, you are in my prayers brother. Please pray for me as well.
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.
"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."
The abandonment comes up again and again as the hardest part. When I was told "no sacraments" for my kids for arbitrary reasons, ostensibly rooted in concern for my own practice of the faith, all I could think was, "If you were concerned, why didn't you reach out to me? Why didn't you, without demanding a meeting for unspecified reasons at a time that didn't work for me, just pick up the phone, or send a text, or do ANYTHING that showed you cared?"
And then another priest on social media reached out to tell me how much he respects me, and how much he prays that God will bless my family and send us a priest who loves and honors my "hunger and thirst for righteousness."
I cried when I read it. THAT is what we who are struggling need to hear. A (spiritual) father's encouragement and love for a struggling son, a suffering brother. I have tears in my eyes even now, having gone back to re-read it. (Father and I both make fun of each other for how easily we become verklempt about this stuff.)
I just wish my pastor had had any idea this is what the faithful need. And I wish every other pastor who places burdens on the faithful would recognize the same. It's not like they don't need us as well. Imagine if we all worked together for each other's good instead of having...Denzinger-measuring contests.
"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. "
The fact that the Church has changed her central act of worship into something that has driven so many out of the Church, or stripped their faith, is hard to fathom. What father, when asked for bread, hands his son a scorpion?
"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 know that feeling well.
"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."
I hope this can be a place for you to feel safe to do exactly that. I created this Substack because I needed that, too.
Just that last line l, "I'm glad you're here," and that you took the time to write it means so much to me. I don't easily belong; I'm depressed by temperament. So, it's healing to have a place like this; oddly enough, Twitter has also served that purpose.
Just one other thought on what you wrote; one of the most common human failings is not realizing that we need to work together and I'd add in humility. More apologies and listening could do much. I'm a therapist; in a more friendly world, the only therapists who would have jobs are those treating major mental conditions like psychoticism. I can't believe I get payed to listen and show empathy; it's rewarding but also sad to see how effective it is. More of that needs to occur in churches, schools, homes, etc.
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.
Mike, you know what I loved best about your comment? The specificity about the food. I really appreciate a man who has that much attention to detail about his preferred cuisine.
If we go through Dallas, I'll try to find this comment again.
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.
"I still like pop culture (what's wrong with liking Alice in Chains and Gregorian Chant?)"
Nothing, that's what. I'm so tired of the battle to be the most Amish. You know why pop culture is popular? Because it's more interesting than anything anyone else is putting out.
Maybe if we had real culture we'd enjoy less of it, but maybe people just need to lighten up.
"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."
Same.
"The not finding a place for myself and my broken relationship with God was going to lead me to despair."
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
"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."
I admit this is one of the challenges. I know you guys are out there, because I get notes from you, and letters, and financial support. I noticed a long time ago that the loudest people in comm boxes at 1P5 are rarely the folks that donate to support the work. They seem to think their opinions are currency enough.
What I love about this medium is that the nominal fee gets those people out of the mix, and we can just talk like friends.
And yeah, stepping back is good advice. Thanks for being a subscriber here. The more I have, the more possible it is to step back from my 1P5 work and do more here, which will be much less intensely focused on all this stuff.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks, Joe!
I'm writing this about 8 or 9 hours later, and after reading all of the comments from others. Like you and many if not all of them, I've got stories to tell. Mine differ in only in time and place, it seems.
I'm a cradle Catholic too. I am, however, the only one left in my family that practices from what was a mixed-marriage, easy-cheesy liberal Catholicism. Around the age of 12, I was flung right into a situation similar to what you faced on World Youth day, when Pope John Paul visited my country, and the school dragged us into BC Place Stadium to be part of what was an ugly, frightening act of public idolatry.
I somehow kept searching for the truth, and eventually, not long after leaving home as a young adult, I found Catholic Tradition. But it wasn't the end of all my problems.
My time in the Canadian Military revealed the genuine face of the world as it is very early in my career, and the Chaplains that were assigned to us for sacramental and pastoral care of us were to me the hard evidence that couldn't be hidden or ignored: that the majority of the “mainstream” Catholic Church was sick, dysfunctional and about as Catholic as Luther's boots.
At a time in our lives, when as young men and men and women we were facing the ugly realities of things like rape gangs, child trafficking, mass graves and serial murder on an industrial scale, we couldn't look to Chaplains for care and guidance, because they weren't there. If they were, all they wanted to be was some bizarre form of social worker. Somehow, through all that, I kept going.
Every return back to Canada from somewhere “out there” deepened my sense of alarm at the general unawareness of most people, and their almost willing ignorance of what was happening to the church, even in their own parish. Decades before it became a thing, I knew the media was lying and distorting the news. The realities I faced on the ground wherever we were deployed never matched the story told by others at home.
What was almost the last straw for me was when, on a deployment a few years before I retired, we waited for hours before leaving on a mission tasking for a chaplain to arrive at our FOB from Headquarters so that we could receive the Sacraments. When the Chaplain finally showed up, it wasn’t a priest. It was female Captain.
Long story short, we left without confessions and receiving Holy Communion. Later that day our patrol encountered an IED, and four men died without receiving the Sacraments. The only time we would see the priest we expected was later, at the ramp ceremony. We never him again for the rest of the tour. Nobody wants to face eternity and their Last Judgement this way. But the Chaplains were never taken to task, and nobody cared.
I’ve been part of a diocesan TLM for three years since my wife and I moved to the city where I live. In all that time, I still know only a handful of people’s names, and as the only injured veteran in the parish that I know of that has actually killed the enemies of the One True Faith, I can’t tell you how lonely it is to go there, where most people don’t even know my name, or even seem to want to. And if they do know it, and that I’m a veteran of the wars in the Middle East, I might as well be a shadow and a thought to them. I’m either invisible, or frightening. Either way, I’m not going to be invited over for dinner.
My wife and I faithfully go, mass after mass, invisible, to receive the Sacraments in a church full of brothers and sisters who are not brothers and sisters. How many times now have I tried to start a conversation with someone I’ve been praying beside for years, only to have them ask me if I’m new to the parish?
Yes, I know you are speaking truth when you say that Traditionalism is not real.
My wife and I are expecting a true miracle of God soon. The baby will come in November, and I hope that we won’t encounter the problems you are experiencing right now, but we are preparing for the worst anyway. No matter where we look, the first and last thing we encounter most of the time is the Corporate face of Catholic Church, Inc, LLP.
Our personal faith has turned away from this business-like entity, and worked on developing our inner faith and home life in order to persevere. Our faith is a lot more portable and flexible, teachable and strong. We read, we study, we discuss, we pray. We go on with our lives, and if we can’t receive the Sacraments in Church at Mass, we pray the Spiritual Communion.
Steve, between my wife and I alone, we have all the trade skills necessary to build a parish church from scratch, but we can’t fix stupid, and we have no idea how to train and teach people and priests to avoid becoming addicted to willful stupidity and ignorance. But like you, when it comes to getting what we asked for, we get angry when we encounter situations like you did with your parish priest. And when it happens, our modus operandi is: if I can’t get your respect, you’re fear will do nicely.
So bravo to you and Jamie. We have your back, and you’re in our prayers. Stay angry, cool guy.
Joe.
Joe, there's so much in your comment to reflect on, but this was just brutal:
"Long story short, we left without confessions and receiving Holy Communion. Later that day our patrol encountered an IED, and four men died without receiving the Sacraments. The only time we would see the priest we expected was later, at the ramp ceremony. We never him again for the rest of the tour. Nobody wants to face eternity and their Last Judgement this way. But the Chaplains were never taken to task, and nobody cared."
I'm sure those of you who were deployed without the sacraments you wanted tried to make your peace with God as you headed out. Is it just me, or would many traditionalists assume those men wound up in hell, even though they sought out the remedy?
This is the stuff I can't fathom.
We said a Rosary together, before leaving. And an older soldier among us led everyone in a Spiritual Communion, and we all said an Act of Contrition.
Every time we went outside the razor wire and reinforced walls, we were afraid, but we went anyway. All we had was hope, really, and maybe it was just a fool's hope, but we had it, and each other. And maybe I'm still just a fool, but I still have hope, for me, and for them too.
And I never got used to missing them for long, and so much. They were my brothers, and many of them were as dear to me as if they were my own sons. We lived together far away from safety and peace, and in very dangerous places for many years, and we got used to it, but we never got used to coming home to find that our place there was taken. I never learned how to unlearn all the truth I learned, so I never got used to how lonely it feels to be surrounded by the truth, beauty and reverence of tradition, and feeling as invisible to the flesh and blood people around me as their own guardian angels are. None of us that go to war or face real evil can ever really come home again. There is no home to come back to.
It hurts me so bad, even all these years later, not because I believe my brothers are in hell, but because the people we needed most to give us the little we ever asked for in return for risking everything seemed to be trying to put us there. The laity we knew, and the priests. And never really knowing why.
Would many traditionalists assume they wound up in hell? Oh, yes. I got that from many I spoke to about this and other stories.
I used to hope that if people back home just knew what truly happened, and who did it, then maybe enough people could join together to help change it so it wouldn't happen anymore. When I kept getting these reactions -- these assumptions -- from traditional laity and clerics about my friends, and about me … well. It stopped me. I stopped trying to tilt at the windmill.
Oh, I forgive them. Sure I do, I don't want to carry that crap on my soul or in my head. I forgive the priests too. After all, how is a guy who has near-zero actual life experience supposed to give advice and spiritual direction to somebody like me?
I talked to a priest after my first brutal experience with mass graves. I was shaken, shell-shocked and needed counselling and advice, but in the end I had to stop going to see him because HE was so shaken and shell-shocked by just meeting me and listening to what I saw and experienced that he wound up in therapy himself. I feel sorry for the guy, but now what do I do?
Like you, there's a lot about this that I can't fathom. I'm still a pretty bright guy, even after years of head injuries, but I gotta wonder: why it's not okay to say out loud that I think the guy who told Steve Skojec of all people I know that his kids couldn't have the Sacraments because he didn't think their parents were -- Rich enough? Catholic enough? -- is a clueless moron? A corporate pipeline flunky? A bad priest who apparently was too important, tired or "busy" to bother keeping in touch and giving a shit? (I've got a repertoire of cusswords that can peel the barnacles off of Luther's ass, but I will spare you).
I'm working as hard as I can looking for answers. Looking for the right action to take. I'm not going to give up. It makes me furious, all this shallow, beige, death of a thousand cuts evil inflicted on good people like you and Jamie that never deserved it, and I want to find a way to stop it, because that's what I did my whole life.
I never had the kind of family that would stand up and protect me from bullies and thugs, so I did the best I could on my own. I never became the world's best at it or anything, but I got good enough to win more fights than I lost. I'm tired, and I'm at my limit sometimes, but I'm not going to stop.
I think the most important thing you've done for me, Steve, is that, even though we have never met in person, you've acted as only a real man would, by writing and reaching out with genuine fellowship and truth. It has been a great relief to me to know I'm not all alone, and, if I reach back out there that somebody will answer, who is thinking the same things, living with the same fears, pain and doubt, and like me, still gives a damn anyway. Not because it's traditional, but because that's the right thing to do. Not because of some rule or rubric, because this is just a good way to be.
I'm at peace with God, don't misunderstand me. I can be, because after all these years, He still hasn't ordered my death, and keeps sending me people and things to show me where to go next.
I just wish He would use the phone.
Damn it, Joe. I've got a good imagination, and I can apply it and some empathy to get just a peek at what you're going through, but you're in the deep muck of the swamp, and have been for a long time. I don't envy any man that.
I feel a strong kinship to you, even though I know these are just words floating around on the internet.
I'm really glad you're here. I hope you'll stick around.
I've had a similar experience but as a therapist rather than military. I see a lot of the fallout from really dark things like rape, abuse, killing, etc. It's hard to meet genuine friends and I get known as the therapist who people occasionally ask questions about one thing or another or they tell me their theories about the mind. When you're not like everyone else, it shows. My dad was military; he got on well in my childhood parish where a lot of the guys were WW2 vets but that's changing for him as more of them are dying.
Also, congrats on the baby!
Thank you. I can certainly relate to everything you said in your comment from earlier. I can guess from this one too that it's pretty tough where you're at, trying to do that job. Having been on both the receiving end and the giving end of counselling, I know it is a lot of being stuck between a brick wall and a hard place. Take care, and God bless.
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.
There's a lot here, and I appreciate it, but I want to address the comment about leaving.
I'm not sure I'm leaving. I'm not sure I even could. I don't know how to root out decades of programming going back to before I can remember. The Church, and her threat of damnation if I go anywhere else, has claws so deep in me that the fear never truly rests.
I *want* to leave. I *want* to be done. I am disgusted through and through.
But the fear that I'm wrong, the fear that all the bad stuff that's happened to me has clouded my vision, the thought that maybe my friend is right and I was never really taught the right things after all (even though they've been confirmed over and over by priests and other Catholics over the years) all weigh on me.
If the Church really is what she claims to be, I need to be a part of it. But I need to find a way to be a real, meaningful part of it. I need to find a way to be spiritually nourished by it. And I'm not.
Being a Catholic all these years taught me lots of rules to follow and I've had tons of theological debates and all of that is great, but when was someone going to teach me how to know and love a God who feels to me as though he's on the other side of a nearly-infinite, unbridgeable chasm?
I don't know that I have ever truly loved God. I have only feared him. And there comes a point in time where fear ceases to be enough to keep you in your place. You want to tell the guy who has had a gun to your head all that time, "You know what? Just go ahead and shoot. Even that would be better than all this sitting around being bound to a chair forever."
I have a toxic relationship with the Church for various reasons, and what I feel as though I need is distance. I actually hate that the Church doesn't make a provision for that. The Sunday obligation is a do-or-die proposition; go and you might be saved, don't and you'll surely be damned.
But sometimes in a relationship you need some time apart. That's what I was trying to do this past year, making the most of the dispensation. And because I did it, I got another knife in the back from the one priest who should have been most concerned about why I wasn't there.
So I don't know what to do, but for now I feel like flipping off the gunman. I need time to process, and that may just have to mean honoring the divine precept from home for a while.
What is keeping me holding on is distance. No Catholic media. No online homilies. Nothing. We are part of a Novus Ordo parish for various reasons. Our dispensation was just lifted on Pentecost.
We're a Catholic parish in the middle of the Protestant south and the worship preferences of our older parishioners reflect that. I ignore it all. It's easier for me to do now because I've gone through a four-year Bible study with a lot of older parishioners and I can see that they are all faithful Catholics even though their hymn preferences are at odds with my own.
I ignore it all. We receive the Eucharist. We receive absolution for our sins.
Formation is reading our daily readings together in the morning, praying the rosary together. Reading about Church history to the kids. Ignoring every story about the Church hierarchy at all levels and remaining focused on receiving the Eucharist, doing good, and avoiding evil.
I ignore it all. I am a medieval peasant. I don't know who the pope is. I see my bishop every few years at best.
I have never had that overwhelming, personal feeling of love either. I hope one day that it happens, but I'm not an emotional person. I don't know if it's something that's possible for me in this world.
Thanks for the clarification and sorry for the presumption. There is a lot here that I can second: "But I need to find a way to be a real, meaningful part of it. I need to find a way to be spiritually nourished by it. And I'm not." And also: "I don't know that I have ever truly loved God." I cannot tell you how many times I have said “Jesus I love You” but then had to add “but really I don’t and that is an aspiration. Someday, Jesus, I hope to love You.”
The COVID blanket dispensation has been a blessing for you then. I may be mistaken, but I believe that it is also possible for any parish priest (pastor) to dispense from the Church precept of attending Mass on Sunday for a good reason (though no one can dispense from the obligation to keep holy the Sabbath, which I don’t suppose you are interested in anyway). I am sure you have run through all of the various possibilities in your head. But maybe register at your geographic parish and approach the pastor with your situation. Perhaps you can continue to get some space while also allowing your children the sacraments.
I love you as a Christian brother. I have benefited greatly from being able to read your writing. If there is any way I can help you, please let me know. Above all, know of my prayers.
Hey Man. Just subscribed and look forward to reading some of your more esoteric writing. I’m a recovering Catholic myself. I still go to mass and the Sacrament of Penance. I’m a recovering seminarian as well, having spent 12 years in seminary. High school, college and theology. Left right before I was supposed to be ordained to diaconate. That’s a story in itself. But this isn’t about me. We are the walking wounded brother. So many battle stories and scars from this entity that is the Church. Saints and sinners all of us. You don’t need anyone’s permission to take a sabbatical from the Church. My suggestion is to live your life but never stop trying to be a saint. Just be the best version of who you can be RIGHT now. I think that’s all that God ever expects from us. Heal. Just take time to heal. Reconnect with the Source. You are dealing with some serious trauma and it’s going to take a long time. Maybe years. Probably the rest of your life. Not to be discouraging but we are on the Via Dolorosa. That’s just life. The Church will wait for you. She always will. I am still dealing with my own trauma. I still don’t know if I want to give the Church another opportunity to hurt me either. But I found that keeping Yeshua at the center of it all to be key. I am slowly discovering Him again. Reading the NT. St Paul. I’ve also watched all three seasons of the Chosen. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend. When we allow the Gospels to truly transform us, when we truly allow Yeshua to become the Master of our life, all the rest falls into place. Everything else is just straw. Love and mercy is key. Compassion is what is needed, especially with ourselves. We must forgive ourselves. That is one of the bravest acts we can perform. We must not only love Christ but we must love ourselves as He loves us. We must treat ourselves as He would treat us. Allow yourself to be one of those broken people in the Gospels who needed His healing. Maybe we all are Mary of Magdala. She was possessed by demons. She was a sinner but Yeshua never looked away from her. He took her woundedness and her hurt into himself. Allow Yeshua to do that for you. Give him your hurt, your trauma, and your wounds. Allow the healer to heal you. Scream, cry, weep but call out to him. He is there with you and He will raise you up. That is Good News! If we focus enough on Him then He can transform our rage, fear, and anger. He will redeem that. You can no longer stop being Catholic than you can stop breathing air. The brainwashing is just too powerful. I’m only half serious about that. It is in our bones brother. No matter how far we might run, the faith is in our bones. Even if you became a raging pagan, the Catholic sensibility will never leave you. You have looked through that lens for too long. You may have experienced a cult in the Legion and the FSSP but your worldview will always be undeniably Catholic to some point. I pray that you will be led to wherever God is calling you but always use the tools of discernment. Find a solid place perhaps to do an Ignatian silent retreat. Go through the Exercises. A good one will break you and build you back up again. I need to do the same myself. The Church needs men like us more than ever. WE need to be the Shepherds now to protect the sheep from the Wolves. I pray that whatever happens you find the peace only Yeshua can give. Shalom!
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.
Love your comment, thank you!
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.
That thing where you keep getting shoved into smaller and smaller subsets? Not a fan of that. Feels like a trap.
It does. It feels like I'm systematically being pushed out.
As an aside, despite praising them, I know my experience with the SSPX is anecdotal and very limited. Have you considered going there, since it seems like your traditional liturgy options are limited? I'd be curious to see what your experience of them would be.
I have a similar World Youth Day story, except you were a greater man than I was.
I went to the Toronto World Youth Day with my parish at the time. On the day of the Papal Mass, members of our group complained so much about the heavy rain that our chaperones directed us back to the bus, before the Mass had even started. I was 18 or 19 then. I disagreed with them and should have resisted more than I did. I should have stayed, but I capitulated and returned to the bus. I remember looking through the bus window, thinking what a waste of time the whole trip had been and how pointless were the efforts of our fundraising and preparations. We, of course, managed the time for a shopping trip at the Eaton Center and took pictures on the glass floor of the CN tower while in Toronto.
Once we returned home, a few of us were asked to speak after Mass about our pilgrimage. I became a fraud and a liar as I stood before the parish and spoke of the "tranformative" experience. We omitted the fact that we failed to fulfill the singular purpose of the pilgrimage, for which many there had donated. I felt terrible guilt, looking into their eyes.
At this parish, we had an old gay man named Lance who was always drunk and would regularly position himself to just happen be where the youth group was. Once when I was sick, he told me that I needed to "get rip-roaring drunk and sit naked in a sauna to sweat it all out". That's the least of the creepy things Lance said to the young men there. I was told that our priest had told him to stay away from us, but that was never enforced and he never left us alone.
I have so many stories...
Ugh.
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.
Very well said Deborah. Like you, I am also convert from Protestantism (2015). It has only occurred to me somewhat recently, through much sin, suffering and darkness, that for most of my almost 6 years as a Catholic I have made an idol of the Church. I slowly realized at some point that only Christ himself is the Way, not the institutional Church (important though it is). I came across this quote from St. Augustine's Confessions yesterday:
"It is one thing to survey our peaceful homeland from a wooded height but fail to find the way there, and make vain attempts to travel through impassable terrain, while fugitive deserters marshaled by the lion and the dragon obstruct and lurk in ambush; and quite another to walk steadily in the way that leads there, along the well-built road opened up by the heavenly emperor, where no deserters from the celestial army dare commit robbery, for they avoid that way like torment."
Steve, perhaps (like me) you have been making "vain attempts to travel through impassable terrain" by focusing so much on the Church, its bad shepherds, it myriad of serious problems, and even on its dogmas and precepts, to the exclusion of our Lord himself. As your essay so painfully makes clear, that path is where the "fugitive deserters" of the evil one lurk. But the "well-built road opened up by the heavenly emperor" is Christ himself, and only He can get us home. Yes, the Church is, and provides, the means to follow Him on that way, but it is only the bride, not the bridegroom. He opened my eyes recently to what I should have known all along: Love God, Love your neighbor; Jesus will take care of the rest.
Steve, you are in my prayers brother. Please pray for me as well.
God love you.
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.
"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."
The abandonment comes up again and again as the hardest part. When I was told "no sacraments" for my kids for arbitrary reasons, ostensibly rooted in concern for my own practice of the faith, all I could think was, "If you were concerned, why didn't you reach out to me? Why didn't you, without demanding a meeting for unspecified reasons at a time that didn't work for me, just pick up the phone, or send a text, or do ANYTHING that showed you cared?"
And then another priest on social media reached out to tell me how much he respects me, and how much he prays that God will bless my family and send us a priest who loves and honors my "hunger and thirst for righteousness."
I cried when I read it. THAT is what we who are struggling need to hear. A (spiritual) father's encouragement and love for a struggling son, a suffering brother. I have tears in my eyes even now, having gone back to re-read it. (Father and I both make fun of each other for how easily we become verklempt about this stuff.)
I just wish my pastor had had any idea this is what the faithful need. And I wish every other pastor who places burdens on the faithful would recognize the same. It's not like they don't need us as well. Imagine if we all worked together for each other's good instead of having...Denzinger-measuring contests.
"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. "
The fact that the Church has changed her central act of worship into something that has driven so many out of the Church, or stripped their faith, is hard to fathom. What father, when asked for bread, hands his son a scorpion?
"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 know that feeling well.
"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."
I hope this can be a place for you to feel safe to do exactly that. I created this Substack because I needed that, too.
I'm glad you're here.
Just that last line l, "I'm glad you're here," and that you took the time to write it means so much to me. I don't easily belong; I'm depressed by temperament. So, it's healing to have a place like this; oddly enough, Twitter has also served that purpose.
Just one other thought on what you wrote; one of the most common human failings is not realizing that we need to work together and I'd add in humility. More apologies and listening could do much. I'm a therapist; in a more friendly world, the only therapists who would have jobs are those treating major mental conditions like psychoticism. I can't believe I get payed to listen and show empathy; it's rewarding but also sad to see how effective it is. More of that needs to occur in churches, schools, homes, etc.
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.
Mike, you know what I loved best about your comment? The specificity about the food. I really appreciate a man who has that much attention to detail about his preferred cuisine.
If we go through Dallas, I'll try to find this comment again.
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.
I, too, would like to find a way out of this pit.
But sometimes, you just get lost for a while.
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.
"where is the *sane* Church?"
If you figure that out, please let us know!
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.
"I still like pop culture (what's wrong with liking Alice in Chains and Gregorian Chant?)"
Nothing, that's what. I'm so tired of the battle to be the most Amish. You know why pop culture is popular? Because it's more interesting than anything anyone else is putting out.
Maybe if we had real culture we'd enjoy less of it, but maybe people just need to lighten up.
"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."
Same.
"The not finding a place for myself and my broken relationship with God was going to lead me to despair."
Yes. 100%.
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
"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."
I admit this is one of the challenges. I know you guys are out there, because I get notes from you, and letters, and financial support. I noticed a long time ago that the loudest people in comm boxes at 1P5 are rarely the folks that donate to support the work. They seem to think their opinions are currency enough.
What I love about this medium is that the nominal fee gets those people out of the mix, and we can just talk like friends.
And yeah, stepping back is good advice. Thanks for being a subscriber here. The more I have, the more possible it is to step back from my 1P5 work and do more here, which will be much less intensely focused on all this stuff.
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
Thanks, 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.
Feel free to hit me up via my contact form: https://steveskojec.com/contact_me/