My Path to Tradition
1. Tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up, and what was your level of exposure to Catholicism as a child and as a young adult?
I grew up as an only child in a small town of 1500 in central New Mexico. My mother’s Spanish ancestry extends several hundred years to the exploration of Coronado into the northern territories from Mexico and eventually the establishment of the Camino Real in the 1800s, with my family settling a few miles off the Camino in what is now the valley south of Albuquerque. As such, there is a rich Catholic culture in my heritage and of course many blended customs and traditions that have their European, Mexican, and native origins.
My religious upbringing was in Novus Ordo life in a small parish in the 80s and 90s. I, like so many others, had perhaps a shaky but regular exposure to the Catholic Faith through the Novus Ordo sacraments, diocesan catechism classes, and my parents and grandmother doing their best to augment my instruction. I served on the altar, read as lector, and helped as sacristan throughout my adolescence.
As close to the bosom of small parish Church life as I was, during my teenage years (like so many) I experienced a gradual weakening of faith under the stronger influences of public school and secular youth culture, helped along by the emasculated atmosphere of the ecclesial body of the Novus Ordo. While it was OK to go to mass and serve on Sundays, you just weren’t “cool” if you practiced virtues such as chastity, temperance, fortitude, fear of the Lord, etc., in a public manner, most especially outside the boundaries of the Church property. The standard was and still is in diocesan life to have a separate faith life from your weekly existence. Sins are often overlooked and excused as long as you make things right in your mind by Saturday evening or Sunday morning.
To be brief, I experienced nearly a complete loss of faith during my college years while attending a technical school for engineering. After graduation however, it was not long before I met my beautiful bride, and together we had a reversion of faith after marrying in the little Catholic Church I grew up in. I attribute many things to my reversion: my amazing wife, prayerful parents, a good memory of the fruits of the Faith—all of it providential. We are now blessed with five beautiful children.
2. What experience first piqued your interest in Tradition?
Years ago my wife and I met a family (now great friends) who were searching for a good orthodox diocesan parish after moving near us. We recommended our Novus Ordo parish at the time and while they liked it, they for the most part ‘moved right past us’ and within a short time ended up attending the local diocesan indult TLM, which I had no idea existed.
Eventually our friends invited us to attend a Sunday Low Mass with them, and we obliged after some discussion. At the time, my wife had begun to do a little research on the old Mass and some of the events that led to the establishment of the Novus Ordo. In my ignorance I had no clue that anything in the Church was amiss in the previous decades regarding the state of the liturgy or her doctrines. The post-conciliar changes and historical events are obviously not taught in any official capacity in or out of the Church. Thus, being born after the revolution of the 60s and early 70s, we were none the wiser. However, the transition from the pontificate of Benedict to that of Francis brought about an awareness of the concept of a political shift within the church, such that by the time we sat in the pew of our first Low Mass, we had some idea that this ‘ancient rite’ was a ‘thing’ among a small number of Catholics, whom we imagined were typically older and had some sort of antiquated attachment to familiarity, yet had lived through some political shifting in the Church and were thus perhaps still hurting.
Our first experience was well, middle of the road. We obviously couldn’t understand anything. However, we both left knowing we had fulfilled our Sunday obligation and that somehow this ‘slightly weird and obscure’ liturgy was the center of the Church for a long time. We went back to Novus Ordo parish life, but little did we know things were about to shift.
3. What issues did you wrestle with during your conversion to Tradition, and how have you found resolutions to those concerns?
Within a short time of our first Low Mass, we found ourselves moving to a new Novus Ordo community with a classical Catholic school that had a great reputation. Our children transitioned well with some effort, but we noticed as they progressed in their classical education that they became more interested in subjects related to our Church and Faith’s grand traditions; old Catholic art, music, literature, etc. In parallel, we saw our hierarchy reach a blasphemous climax in the Pachamama scandal, which became our tipping point, the straw that broke the proverbial back of our camel, which was holding us from visiting this ‘rogue’ Society chapel in town—the same chapel that our good friends had found their way to a few years earlier.
Shortly after Pachamama in the Vatican gardens, we found ourselves in the pews at Sts. Peter and Paul Chapel, FSSPX in Albuquerque at High Mass for the feast of Christ the King. I suppose the Holy Ghost knows exactly what, when, and how things are done properly, because at this time He hit me with a revelation of graces. As soon as the chanting of the Introit began, I realized this was something very sacred. By the middle of the Kyrie, I was in tears. By the Gloria, I was feeling both awestruck, and well, angry! Here was this beautiful liturgy that was kept hidden from mainstream Catholics, and within minutes my soul realized it was indeed both the perfect and proper worship due to almighty God; and as our birthright, it was stolen from us by evil men within the Church. I instantly knew why so many of my family members had lost their faith. They had their spiritual hearts ripped from them.
The next few months for me personally was a whirlwind of discovery, trying to learn as much as I could and help my head catch up with my heart. My wife was fully on board, having done enough research in the previous months to know the truth when she saw it. My kids…I do credit that Novus Ordo classical school, because they recognized that this ancient liturgy matched all that they were learning! Going back to the Novus Ordo mass a few times, well, it was now out of place. It lacked substance and a clear lineage of sacred history within its own climate space, if you will. My kids sniffed this out amazingly fast and in detail. They recognized that banging on the guitar and dancing in the pews rhythmically, among other things, was just not a property of proper Catholic worship. My four-year-old son even said on a Sunday morning, quote: “Dad, are we going to the real mass?” It’s not like we had extensive discussions with him about liturgical dissimilarities!
While we struggled for a while trying to balance being in the Novus Ordo school community, our transition on the weekend to attend the TLM was fairly quick. By this time, I had done a fair bit of reading about the liceity of attending SSPX sacraments, and was directed by our good priest to a few documents that helped on the subject of supplied jurisdiction. Was it tough ‘defying’ our bishop who publicly stated on the diocesan website that the SSPX was in schism with the Catholic Church? Yes. It still is to this day. But the answer lies in the proper order of obedience. We serve God and give Him His due worship—our first fruits, above the order of man, regardless of his office within the Church. The lower cannot trump the higher. My responsibility after giving God His due worship is to ensure I do not contribute to the destruction of the Church, and putting my wife and children in front of a liturgy or homily that can harm their faith is contributing to the destruction of the Body of Christ. It’s really that simple…
4. Why did you settle on the SSPX as opposed to some other TLM community?
Having friends at the local SSPX chapel and no FSSP nearby was, in my mind looking back, divinely providential. Likely had there been an FSSP near us, we would have migrated there based on what we knew at the time. However, because our local bishop publicly labeled the SSPX chapel schismatic, I was forced to do research up front and make an attendance decision. I read about the history of the Vatican-II era and what led up to it. I read about how the Novus Ordo Mass was created (not organically modified from a continuous liturgy) and how it was theologically a great departure from its Christo-centric predecessor (as I saw from the Ottaviani Intervention). I read about how there was one bishop of the Catholic Church who stood against basically the entire hierarchy and kept alive what was handed down to him from his magisterial forebears in the old Mass and the traditional priesthood (and indirectly Catholic society).
I read Michael Davies, Bishop Tissier de Mallerais, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Fr. James Wathen, and of course the good Archbishop himself. I read how the magisterial Church used to instruct and guide souls, in encyclicals like Quanta Cura, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, and Auctorem Fidei. I read how the magisterial Church used to lay the law down speaking with clarity and authority, in declarations such as from the Council of Trent, and the ever-important papal bull of Quo Primum of Pius V, which to this day contains the strongest language of any Church document I have come across. I read canon law, and studies on supplied jurisdiction and the 1988 consecrations and what lead up to them.
Then I read and listened to all the detractors—you know these people, they’re everywhere. We have to pray for them. Anyway, all of their valid points have to do with Church teaching about obedience in a normal, functioning Church society and hierarchy. What I found most striking about 100% of the arguments against the SSPX is that they readily ignore or dismiss anything related to an abnormality of status within the Church, and if you dare bring up the word “crisis” they immediately yell “subjective!” Yet, of course we have actual objective data for the past sixty years and it is devastating! We have a situation not seen in the Church since the time of St. Athanasius, and even worse, when you look at the actual intention of today’s modernist hierarchy, which is to fundamentally change the nature of the Church into a universalist or free-masonic institution that is in lock-step with the concerns of a secular humanist society.
So why do I choose the SSPX? Beginning with the good Archbishop Lefebvre and continuing to this day with the Society, they are the only group who has defended Catholic Tradition at all costs, labeled as schismatic and rebels all the while. They have preserved the Catholic priesthood, doctrine, education, and a microcosm of a perfect Catholic society. You cannot understand this until you read the history of what we had, how we lost it, and who followed the correct hierarchy of obedience in defending all aspects of the one true Faith. Other groups still practice portions of this, but no one else has the whole. So I choose willfully to stand with the SSPX, the good Archbishop and his truly Catholic pedigree.
5. What practices or devotions within Tradition have you found to be most fruitful for you?
We of course have discovered the fruits of the daily rosary, but also devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and periodic reconsecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary as immensely strengthening in our faith. Our daily family routine is simply more modest and prayerful than it used to be. My wife and I try to begin our day with a meditation from Divine Intimacy when possible. Our family is now on a regular confession schedule, and we get to mass as often as we can. We keep the bad media out, and intentionally teach the practice of virtue to the kids at home, in line with the instruction they receive at their SSPX school. Are we perfect? Of course not, but the difference from now and a few years ago is night and day. I can honestly make a claim of truly trying to live a Catholic life now. Hopefully in the future, God will allow my wife and I to become Third Order Society members and help us advance in spirituality.
6. Now that you are a traditional Catholic, what are the greatest challenges that you face?
I have come to firmly believe that God blesses those who jump headfirst, immediately. In the 9th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells those who want to follow Him but first need to take care of their business are not serving Him. “No man putting his hand to the plough and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk. 9:62). One of the biggest challenges our family has faced is letting go of pieces of our former life. We’ve had to say goodbye to many friends, a beautiful old home, a solid well-paying job and career, and really a large portion of our personal history. However, the choice to uproot and move to an amazing place like Saint Marys, Kansas has provided my family with something absolutely and incredibly irreplaceable. It has given my family a real, tangible grasp of what it means to live an authentically Catholic life, both privately and publicly. While our daily challenges are keeping old media habits out or our prayer lives in proper order, our entire community goes through the same challenges and we meet these together as a chapel and one large family. This concept is utterly lost in the modern Church, as the secular society bleeds into your weekend Church life and it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. Not so with Traditional communities. Our challenge is not being too prideful that we have found something incredibly, amazingly Catholic.
7. Do you have any advice for the reader who may be considering, but not yet committed to Tradition?
We are given exactly one life and one chance to provide our eternal soul with the path to everlasting joy and peace. In many cases we are also responsible for many little souls under our care. This is not exactly a new revelation, but how easy it is to fall into a mode of contentment or apathy, thinking things just have to be a certain way and that we are just subject to whatever state the Church and the world are in. While true to a certain extent, I would encourage this type of reader to not ignore their conscience that may be tugging at them, asking for more. God gives us an inner sense of the truth, and as Catholics we inherently have a spiritual connection to the sensus fidelium that is the Body of Christ. If you are praying after receiving communion at a Novus Ordo mass and you feel distracted or that there may be something not right with the sight of laywomen distributing communion in the hand; know that this is the voice of God. Your connection to the sensus fidelium is telling you this, and it is good and just that you pay attention to it, for God deserves perfect love from us.
From this, if you have attended the Latin Mass only a few times and yet you feel some sense of good and right, not simply from the noticeable reverence but from perhaps an inner peace, then I encourage you to keep attending, at least for a month or two. I believe it an axiom that God works through the Mass of the Ages in its sublime beauty and grace over time, and you will likely find your heart and conscience agreeing that the truth of God will be found in Tradition and the Mass that produced countless saints, popes, bishops, priests, and religious of the Church for century upon century.
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