Howdy compadre. I have been noticing your change in tone over the last few months, and it was making me almost glad, except that I was skeptical. This post has taken away my skepticism. God bless you!
I grew up in traditional Catholicism, and I am still a traditional Catholic... or, rather, I am now a traditional Catholic. As you said, the traditionalist crowd is often very ideological. It was only by the grace of God that I did not become an ideologue. I have made it a point over the last 5 years to get anyone insulting me on social media to buy or recommend a book that will make their arguments rather than insult me. That, along with simply “reading the enemy” in general, has really widened my mind, and helped me to understand so much. That can be very dangerous for those that are not solidly grounded in Truth, though.
Anyway, now you and I are definitely fellow travelers. I started reading in earnest about 5 years ago, and every year I read more. The more I read, the more I transform. I hit 80 books last year, and am over 20 this year. Some short.
This post makes me glad. I am so happy for you. I hope we can visit one day. I think we have at least one mutual real life friend, Fr. Shannon. Anyway, God bless you and your family.
Back before Vatican II and all, there was a sense of an Objective and Real to which we were all beholden and under which we all fell short. I say this, not because I lived then, but because I've tried to understand it through studying history, and mostly, through studying literary Catholics who all led wildly different sorts of lives, who all considered themselves Catholics, but didn't seem to feel the need to excommunicate others who lived differently.
Now, We Are The Church. So what's paramount is each person's Personal Journey. So when another person's Journey doesn't match our Journey, we feel it is in within our rights to challenge it. It doesn't matter if we are "left" or "right" - it's the spiritual landscape in which all of us under 70 have been formed. The objective is *gone* - so we are all operating within our own infallible cosmos, and we are all gatekeepers.
Sorry if this makes no sense. I started Holy Week off by drinking beer at a wildly violent Bob Odenkirk movie.
I very much enjoyed this, and appreciate your candor and willingness to express what’s been on your heart. I’ve been coming out of a not entirely dissimilar, though not quite comparable, period of emotional and spiritual turmoil, though as a much younger man and a member of the Orthodox Church (dealing with our own uniquely frustrating problems!) When the things we’ve even burying deep down for years finally catch up with us and get our attention, it hurts. Especially when we aren’t able to put on the mask of total self-confidence and assurance anymore, and those around us don’t expect anything less. The saints and holy elders have been my continual comfort. God bless you Steve.
First of all, prayers for the grace to get through what you’re going through and grow and learn. Know that there are a lot of us in the same boat and finding each other is going to be key to weathering this storm! Strength in numbers.
I’ve been having a similar crisis of faith, though less slow burning and more acute. It started bubbling under the surface when Covid started, got a mega steroid shot with the entire election debacle, and now is pretty much at a fever pitch with the vaccine debate. More like screaming match, at least from one side.
I had a breakdown one day a few weeks back because i was so terrified I literally couldn’t function, and I went to a great priest friend of mine (who I believe is also a friend of yours, coincidentally) and said, “Look, give it to me straight. Is all this bad stuff really about to go down? Are we finished? Is America really China west? Is Bill Gates going to sterilize me with his fake vaccine??” Long story short, I left the rectory feeling like a new person, with new hope for the future, that I actually HAD a future, and my children do too, and a peace that I hadn’t experienced in months. He didn’t tell me everything was rosy and there was nothing to fret about, but just brought me back to a reality that I missed SO much.
However, there’s been a downside to this revelation, which is that I’ve realized that a “new creed” has emerged amongst many traditionalist groups. A new way of differentiating yourself as being truly, authentically Catholic. This new creed demands complete filial assent to the “truth” about Covid, about masks, about scientific data, medications, Trump prophecies, and the New World Order.
Not buying into all this stuff has causes a lot of tension and anxiety between me and my trad community. I basically feel like i have no home. No home in the Church, no home in politics, no home in society (because I’m still not a fan of masks and lockdowns like most of the secular world). At least my priest is on my side, and my husband. My circle has gotten smaller, but stronger.
I only recently started following you, although I've seen and appreciated some of your articles on 1P5 over the years. I'm glad I started following when I did, because the journey you are on now is one I have been on myself - a crisis of meaning, involving, partially (though to a lesser extent than you) my relationship with traditional Catholicism.
"I don’t have a full plan, not yet, but I’m feeling my way forward, looking for the path, and I’m getting closer to it." Right there with you.
Thanks Steve. I’ve been having difficulties with many of the same things. Whatever I understood the Catholic Church to be is being refined in my mind.. and painfully so. My wife has had to call me out for the anger I’ve been somewhat engrossed in towards the state of things. Yet, I still find it hard to let go of. Somehow I can’t seem to more permanently shift my focus and cares to more important, more local things that are closer to my ‘sphere of influence’. In many ways I feel betrayed I suppose, by the very institution that instilled the cares in me in the first place. How am I supposed to teach my sons how to understand the truth claims that are practically undermined everyday? There is no where else to go but how can my mind find peace here in an intellectual sense?
I’ve learned a lot from the “Trads” but I have always had difficulty with the busybody attitude most people have—it’s suffocating and only makes things worse.
Steve, your journey is unique in many ways, of course, but common to us all in some of its basic characteristics. Many of us have experienced great disorientation in the past year, even more so than what the Francis Era has brought to our views of the Church. Now the whole world has become less comfortable, and more threatening, and challenges us in ways I could never have imagined five years ago. It will be a privilege to share your ideas and perhaps learn from them, as I have on “the other site.” Godspeed.
steve skojec, i understand your struggle with these present times in the church and the world. it is certainly exhausting to find a way to live our Catholic faith. if it helps, whenever i am angry or dissapointed with myself or with others, i focus on keeping and pulling out of my 'backpack', the daily mass whether onsite or online, the rosary, eucharistic adoration, and confession. and i also know that i must entrust fellow souls to God. i also wanted to respectfully encourage you to do Catholic film work, which you mentioned was of interest to you; there is much authentic work that you can do in this still new field, just as your did for us with 1p5. it would be great if you could present the singular lives of saints, whose struggles were as ours. may your guardian angel brightly shine the lamp of your 'camino'.
Steve, I keep composing comments and then deleting them. All I really want to say is don't be afraid. Keep your eyes focused on God Himself. And don't be afraid to leave the Church for a while. I'm praying for you.
Thank you, Steve. You and Millette are my two favorite people to read on 1P5 because you both seem so willing to be open about everything you're thinking. Honesty is in too short supply amidst this deafening crescendo of crisis.
Steve, so much to say; I think you know you're not alone. We tend to think we're on the side of rational people, and then we see some of 'our people' being weird and wonderful on the internet and it's a shock. In truth though, the entire internet is like that: just go and find the people in space forums who argue that the earth is flat, or the cat-lovers, or the PC gaming obsessives who live and breathe computer games. Etcetera. The internet is an amplifier; it feeds on bad news and clicks and it thrives on divisive arguments.
The problem I'm getting at is that 'radical traditionalism' on the internet is nothing like the one on the ground. There are a bunch of us who are relatively reasonable people trying to circumnavigate the waterfalls and rapids of life on the quiet. But our voice is lost because the internet favours the weird and wonderful, and the divisive and 'newsworthy'.
My wife and I have started calling ourselves 'tradismatics'; we don't belong to either but we have elements of both. We want to read the Bible (not the Douai, thanks but no thanks). I want to go to the pre-55 Holy Week but don't care about the broad stoles and triple candle or whatever. We read Benedict XVI and Archbishop Lefebvre, listen to different views, and so on. Not small 't' tradition for its own sake, big 'T' Tradition because it speaks to us as a living, breathing faith. I think this is a growing group and it's just beginning to get a voice. Maybe God's calling you to use your gift and platform for us?
I appreciate your honesty and openness. You are insightful, talented, creative and funny.
One podcast that has been a great balm for me is Online Great Books. The two men who the discuss the books are such a wonderful model of open inquiry, and they are delightful personalities.
They have a separate venue for reading and discussing the Western Canon. On this podcast they discuss various books that are significant for a myriad of reasons. Go through the archives, pick a book you’re interested in, then sit back and enjoy!
As we set free from the fears of being judged by a roaring crowd, we slowly regain the hability to understand other people's arguments from their own perspective, and for that too we need the Church. As sensible, real human beings, we sometimes need to be able to give ourselves entirely to the person to whom we are talking -or to the idea with which we're duelling- and as long as we have a solid, unshakeable ground upon which we establish ourselves, then we are able to open our hearts and give ourselves to the next without fear of falling in error, for we know that no mather how convincing their perspective may sound, we're still bound by the one faith of the one church in which we believe, and nothing will take that away from us -not even death.
I appreciate you very much Steve. I can relate a lot to the way you write, and feel like we have a lot in common. That being said, I hope you can be set free from any kind of doubt you might have (i'm not saying you do) about the one true faith, and that you're able to live you life as father and writer the way Christ wants us to live it!
Howdy compadre. I have been noticing your change in tone over the last few months, and it was making me almost glad, except that I was skeptical. This post has taken away my skepticism. God bless you!
I grew up in traditional Catholicism, and I am still a traditional Catholic... or, rather, I am now a traditional Catholic. As you said, the traditionalist crowd is often very ideological. It was only by the grace of God that I did not become an ideologue. I have made it a point over the last 5 years to get anyone insulting me on social media to buy or recommend a book that will make their arguments rather than insult me. That, along with simply “reading the enemy” in general, has really widened my mind, and helped me to understand so much. That can be very dangerous for those that are not solidly grounded in Truth, though.
Anyway, now you and I are definitely fellow travelers. I started reading in earnest about 5 years ago, and every year I read more. The more I read, the more I transform. I hit 80 books last year, and am over 20 this year. Some short.
This post makes me glad. I am so happy for you. I hope we can visit one day. I think we have at least one mutual real life friend, Fr. Shannon. Anyway, God bless you and your family.
Back before Vatican II and all, there was a sense of an Objective and Real to which we were all beholden and under which we all fell short. I say this, not because I lived then, but because I've tried to understand it through studying history, and mostly, through studying literary Catholics who all led wildly different sorts of lives, who all considered themselves Catholics, but didn't seem to feel the need to excommunicate others who lived differently.
Now, We Are The Church. So what's paramount is each person's Personal Journey. So when another person's Journey doesn't match our Journey, we feel it is in within our rights to challenge it. It doesn't matter if we are "left" or "right" - it's the spiritual landscape in which all of us under 70 have been formed. The objective is *gone* - so we are all operating within our own infallible cosmos, and we are all gatekeepers.
Sorry if this makes no sense. I started Holy Week off by drinking beer at a wildly violent Bob Odenkirk movie.
I very much enjoyed this, and appreciate your candor and willingness to express what’s been on your heart. I’ve been coming out of a not entirely dissimilar, though not quite comparable, period of emotional and spiritual turmoil, though as a much younger man and a member of the Orthodox Church (dealing with our own uniquely frustrating problems!) When the things we’ve even burying deep down for years finally catch up with us and get our attention, it hurts. Especially when we aren’t able to put on the mask of total self-confidence and assurance anymore, and those around us don’t expect anything less. The saints and holy elders have been my continual comfort. God bless you Steve.
First of all, prayers for the grace to get through what you’re going through and grow and learn. Know that there are a lot of us in the same boat and finding each other is going to be key to weathering this storm! Strength in numbers.
I’ve been having a similar crisis of faith, though less slow burning and more acute. It started bubbling under the surface when Covid started, got a mega steroid shot with the entire election debacle, and now is pretty much at a fever pitch with the vaccine debate. More like screaming match, at least from one side.
I had a breakdown one day a few weeks back because i was so terrified I literally couldn’t function, and I went to a great priest friend of mine (who I believe is also a friend of yours, coincidentally) and said, “Look, give it to me straight. Is all this bad stuff really about to go down? Are we finished? Is America really China west? Is Bill Gates going to sterilize me with his fake vaccine??” Long story short, I left the rectory feeling like a new person, with new hope for the future, that I actually HAD a future, and my children do too, and a peace that I hadn’t experienced in months. He didn’t tell me everything was rosy and there was nothing to fret about, but just brought me back to a reality that I missed SO much.
However, there’s been a downside to this revelation, which is that I’ve realized that a “new creed” has emerged amongst many traditionalist groups. A new way of differentiating yourself as being truly, authentically Catholic. This new creed demands complete filial assent to the “truth” about Covid, about masks, about scientific data, medications, Trump prophecies, and the New World Order.
Not buying into all this stuff has causes a lot of tension and anxiety between me and my trad community. I basically feel like i have no home. No home in the Church, no home in politics, no home in society (because I’m still not a fan of masks and lockdowns like most of the secular world). At least my priest is on my side, and my husband. My circle has gotten smaller, but stronger.
God bless and keep up the good work.
I only recently started following you, although I've seen and appreciated some of your articles on 1P5 over the years. I'm glad I started following when I did, because the journey you are on now is one I have been on myself - a crisis of meaning, involving, partially (though to a lesser extent than you) my relationship with traditional Catholicism.
"I don’t have a full plan, not yet, but I’m feeling my way forward, looking for the path, and I’m getting closer to it." Right there with you.
Thank you for your candor.
Thanks Steve. I’ve been having difficulties with many of the same things. Whatever I understood the Catholic Church to be is being refined in my mind.. and painfully so. My wife has had to call me out for the anger I’ve been somewhat engrossed in towards the state of things. Yet, I still find it hard to let go of. Somehow I can’t seem to more permanently shift my focus and cares to more important, more local things that are closer to my ‘sphere of influence’. In many ways I feel betrayed I suppose, by the very institution that instilled the cares in me in the first place. How am I supposed to teach my sons how to understand the truth claims that are practically undermined everyday? There is no where else to go but how can my mind find peace here in an intellectual sense?
I’ve learned a lot from the “Trads” but I have always had difficulty with the busybody attitude most people have—it’s suffocating and only makes things worse.
Steve, your journey is unique in many ways, of course, but common to us all in some of its basic characteristics. Many of us have experienced great disorientation in the past year, even more so than what the Francis Era has brought to our views of the Church. Now the whole world has become less comfortable, and more threatening, and challenges us in ways I could never have imagined five years ago. It will be a privilege to share your ideas and perhaps learn from them, as I have on “the other site.” Godspeed.
steve skojec, i understand your struggle with these present times in the church and the world. it is certainly exhausting to find a way to live our Catholic faith. if it helps, whenever i am angry or dissapointed with myself or with others, i focus on keeping and pulling out of my 'backpack', the daily mass whether onsite or online, the rosary, eucharistic adoration, and confession. and i also know that i must entrust fellow souls to God. i also wanted to respectfully encourage you to do Catholic film work, which you mentioned was of interest to you; there is much authentic work that you can do in this still new field, just as your did for us with 1p5. it would be great if you could present the singular lives of saints, whose struggles were as ours. may your guardian angel brightly shine the lamp of your 'camino'.
Steve, I keep composing comments and then deleting them. All I really want to say is don't be afraid. Keep your eyes focused on God Himself. And don't be afraid to leave the Church for a while. I'm praying for you.
Thank you, Steve. You and Millette are my two favorite people to read on 1P5 because you both seem so willing to be open about everything you're thinking. Honesty is in too short supply amidst this deafening crescendo of crisis.
Steve, so much to say; I think you know you're not alone. We tend to think we're on the side of rational people, and then we see some of 'our people' being weird and wonderful on the internet and it's a shock. In truth though, the entire internet is like that: just go and find the people in space forums who argue that the earth is flat, or the cat-lovers, or the PC gaming obsessives who live and breathe computer games. Etcetera. The internet is an amplifier; it feeds on bad news and clicks and it thrives on divisive arguments.
The problem I'm getting at is that 'radical traditionalism' on the internet is nothing like the one on the ground. There are a bunch of us who are relatively reasonable people trying to circumnavigate the waterfalls and rapids of life on the quiet. But our voice is lost because the internet favours the weird and wonderful, and the divisive and 'newsworthy'.
My wife and I have started calling ourselves 'tradismatics'; we don't belong to either but we have elements of both. We want to read the Bible (not the Douai, thanks but no thanks). I want to go to the pre-55 Holy Week but don't care about the broad stoles and triple candle or whatever. We read Benedict XVI and Archbishop Lefebvre, listen to different views, and so on. Not small 't' tradition for its own sake, big 'T' Tradition because it speaks to us as a living, breathing faith. I think this is a growing group and it's just beginning to get a voice. Maybe God's calling you to use your gift and platform for us?
I appreciate your honesty and openness. You are insightful, talented, creative and funny.
One podcast that has been a great balm for me is Online Great Books. The two men who the discuss the books are such a wonderful model of open inquiry, and they are delightful personalities.
They have a separate venue for reading and discussing the Western Canon. On this podcast they discuss various books that are significant for a myriad of reasons. Go through the archives, pick a book you’re interested in, then sit back and enjoy!
As we set free from the fears of being judged by a roaring crowd, we slowly regain the hability to understand other people's arguments from their own perspective, and for that too we need the Church. As sensible, real human beings, we sometimes need to be able to give ourselves entirely to the person to whom we are talking -or to the idea with which we're duelling- and as long as we have a solid, unshakeable ground upon which we establish ourselves, then we are able to open our hearts and give ourselves to the next without fear of falling in error, for we know that no mather how convincing their perspective may sound, we're still bound by the one faith of the one church in which we believe, and nothing will take that away from us -not even death.
I appreciate you very much Steve. I can relate a lot to the way you write, and feel like we have a lot in common. That being said, I hope you can be set free from any kind of doubt you might have (i'm not saying you do) about the one true faith, and that you're able to live you life as father and writer the way Christ wants us to live it!
...and thank you, Steve. I'd love to be a fellow traveller on this journey. God bless, protect and guide you.
Let’s go, brother!
It's good to hear from you, Steve. I feel much the same. Leaving Facebook has helped. It's removed some filters that were unhealthy, I think.