Understanding the Crisis in the Church: Insights from Three Readers

The role of the reclaimer; fleeing from the Cross; how the postconciliar Church cannibalizes the laity and pushes the young toward tradition

Nearly every day, I receive mail from readers of this Substack. Sometimes the communication is very brief and asks me a specific question, to which I try to provide a short answer. But sometimes a reader will share at greater length about how he came to tradition, how he discovered the TLM, how his family has been changed by it, how they are suffering due to local strictures placed on it, and so forth. I hear from priests and religious, too, about the good they have seen or the evil they have endured. Writers will share with me information that they believe is too hot to handle, impossible for them to write about themselves, in their circumstances. In this way, I am given the opportunity to ponder some extraordinary tales, insightful and moving.

I tend to save the best of this correspondence in order to quote it at some opportune moment. But lately I have received several mini-essays that are so exceptional, I asked the writers if they would allow me to share them with my readership, and received their permission.

Harry Wilson Watrous, “The Broken Vase” c. 1900 (source)

First, we have an effusion of eloquence, a grand hymn of praise to hope in the midst of miseries. I am sure it will resonate with many readers.—PAK

A Suffering Catholic’s Heart Outpoured

I hope all is well. I have been greatly edified by your writing of late, especially regarding the potentiality of one form or another of a restriction or abrogation of the Tridentine Mass. Obviously, this topic affects so many of us, in varied and severe ways. For myself and my family, this has been just one more bump on the road as we search for home. I vainly desire to be able to just sit and pray—to not be caught up in the newest assault whether political, parochial, liturgical, or ecclesiastical.

The first time I ever witnessed a Mass, it was the once and future Roman Rite, the Mass of my ancestors. I witnessed it as a theologically battle-hardened Calvinist street preacher. The Mass was simultaneously a scalpel and a sledgehammer in the hands of our Lord. The simplicity and intelligibility of it (traits often ascribed to the Modern Rite), the fittingness and polished consistency, the inherent “trueness” of the Tridentine liturgy, all these qualities made it beyond clear that I was in the presence of Christ and that it was totally unacceptable for me to remain apart from His presence. 

The role of the “reclaimer” is relatively common in history and literature. Within my family, thus far, this has been my mission. Most of my predecessors are gone now, never having seen the restoration of hope. They cannot speak, so I will speak for them as best I can. The “reforms” of the 1960s fell hard on the land I call home, and especially hard on my family. We were Irish, German, and Portuguese. We were farmers, cowboys, fishermen, nurses, and ironworkers. We were American, but even more importantly, we were Catholic. We loved our faith, our priests, our families, our country, and our communities. We had stood for truth, defended our families and our freedom. We had fled to a land that none of our fathers had known, so that we would not be hunted by Prussian or British bayonets. Here in the land rightfully claimed and sanctified by Fr. Serra, we planted, and our families grew.

So few still remember what was; so much has been lost, but it is not gone forever. That storms came in the wake of the Council was not the crushing fact. The devastation resulted instead from the fact that our priests and bishops betrayed us. But what were they to do? Fight the hierarchy? Disobey? This is not what they had trained for. I cannot greatly fault them. I am sure they tried to remain faithful as the ground fell out beneath them, too. Who could have imagined that those who held to the errors disavowed in the Oath against Modernism would hijack the Church? Ecumenism became equivalency, tolerance became advocacy, prayer became politics, and Truth was relativized in the name of reaching the young while tossing the same young people to the wolves.

While Kinsey assailed the family, the modernists attacked the Church, the heretics and schismatics efficiently picked off the young. One may be tempted to say they pried them from the bosom of Mother Church, but in reality they were most effective in offering shelter to those who had been abandoned. That spirit of abandonment has persisted to this day. I had to practically fight my way INTO the Church, suffering much loss. I don’t say this with bitterness, because just how are you supposed to evangelize if nothing is true and everything is permitted (all allowed, except of course, tradition). My un-catechized catechist was very excited to proclaim that “the Church changes doctrine all the time” and to extol the Jewish, Buddhist, and Mormon errors. As I would bring these concerns to my priest, it became clear that his placing said catechist in that position was a feature, not a bug, as the same priest had instructed this poor man. 

What do I mean by reclamation? In a parabolic manner of speaking, it is as if your family had a priceless vase which was intended to be handed on in perpetuity. This is no ordinary vase, mind you: so long as you preserve this treasure, you and your posterity would grow in virtue and thrive. The centuries progress, until approximately 50 years ago, when the rightful heir at the urging of his teachers declares “I am my own, I am the pinnacle of all who came before me!” After making his declaration, he throws the vase to the rocks, shattering it, and sweeps the shards into the trash. In doing so he thrusts the world around him into grayness, shadow, and dust.

Time passes. Decades. Along comes the reclaimer (not a redeemer). The reclaimer is the one who searches and digs for each and every shard, carefully reassembling the vase, prayerfully hoping that the destruction wrought may be forgiven and the world bloom again. That is why it is important that each shard of tradition be saved and preserved, so that an inheritance can be reclaimed. There are millions upon millions who have no idea that they were robbed. Please God, let them find their inheritance when they seek it.

If we stand for nothing, we will fall for anything. I would rather suffer condemnation for standing with tradition than receive approval for giving assent and assistance to the cancer of modernism that has destroyed my family, my community, my country. 

We have a great advantage today. We are midgets standing on the shoulders of giants. Valiant men and women, bishops, priests and lay faithful have stood true for over 50 years. Each has defended their section of the wall in their own way. We must not deviate, nor fear failing, for we will not. This will be an age of saints, as all times of great crisis have been. We are beset on all sides, whether it be the grandmother faithful with her rosary, teaching her pentecostal unwed daughter’s children about Our Lady, or the young priest who prizes penance, or the youths who truly and mystically encounter the Reigning Christ at their first High Mass; the enemies are many, the laborers few, but Christ will prevail.

No matter what edict may come down, nor how much we may rightly struggle; the King is on His throne, His glory fills the temple, and we enter His presence woefully unprepared whenever we enter. He patiently hears our best-laid plans, sympathizes with our desires, is amused with our desire for greatness, and then supersedes our greatest hopes by showing us that He will preserve His Church. As the Father clothed the Son in glory during the transfiguration, the Son will clothe his Bride in glory. We may be driven to ecclesiastical ghettoes, we may be denigrated, devalued, and mocked. But we will overcome, we will stand, and our children will carry the torch. 

St. Peter told our Lord that even if all men deserted Him, he would not desert Him. Peter was both right and wrong. Under his own strength he did desert the Lord. Later, imbued with the Holy Ghost, he conquered Rome on an inverted cross. As our Lord told Constantine, “in hoc signo vinces” (in this sign conquer). Our Lord conquered death, and by doing so, conquered and freed all who are under the reign of death. What remains to us is to confirm His victory, to bag and tag the prize of victory, more as harvesters than hunters. 

Our Lord will preserve His Church, and He will preserve His liturgy. The Tridentine liturgy cannot be abrogated because it belongs to God. It is set apart, a burnt offering which, while ever new, cannot be unburnt. 

A recent revert to Tradition sent me the following email.

Hiding or Glorying in the Cross

Back when I was still discovering Tradition, I read a comment someone made stating that they went to a Novus Ordo Mass where the Cross or sacrifice was not even mentioned. It puzzled me and I found it so odd because, even in my poor understanding of the Faith, I knew there was no Catholicism without Our Lord and His sacrifice. Back then, I archived that comment somewhere in my brain under the “random things that happen, but surely cannot be the norm” anecdotes.

Fast forward to where we find ourselves today, and most of all after the pope clearly stated his belief that all religions lead to God (what “god” is he even talking about?). It struck me that, indeed, there is a desire to get rid of Christ and (the scandal of) the Cross. Our Lord Jesus Christ is yet again, as back then, an inconvenience to the Pharisees and He needs to be eliminated. He is an obstacle to the One World Religion some Church leaders want to plunge us into.

This is obviously also why the ancient Liturgy is such a bother to them, because there is no way you can go to a TLM and not see the Cross, and not see His sacrifice, not see Him dead on the cross for our salvation, to save us from hell. I all of a sudden also remembered the “resurrexifixes” we have seen in some NO churches. I’ve seen a modern church that doesn’t even have a crucifix above the altar; instead there is an image of Our Lady. He is nowhere to be found.

It dawned on me that now again, as always, He will be hated and persecuted, and those of us who believe what He said about Himself being the Way, the Truth, the Life, with no compromises, will have to be brave enough to face the same persecution. But oh, how many holy men and women have come before us who can show us the way! We will take comfort in that and thank God for having opened our eyes!

This third piece is written by Genevieve Kineke of feminine-genius.com (thank you for sending it to me!). The way she weaves together the Legionaries of Christ with the hijacking of active participation and the threefold demographic division in the Church is to my mind very insightful.

Cannibalism in the Church

My first thought concerns cults in the Church; here I will consider the Legionaries of Christ. I was long associated with Regnum Christi (the lay branch) and after leaving learned a lot about how cults operate. I worked with the CDF to help expose Maciel, and wrote extensively (under a pseudonym) to try to salvage the faith of Catholics after this devastating chapter, which revealed a lot of corruption in the curia.

One line the Legion always floated was: “Look at all the fruit.” It was confusing to see the dedicated seminarians, the enthusiastic “consecrated” women, and the hard-working co-workers. One surmised that there must be something wonderful in the organisation to foster such troops.

After years of studying it, I could finally see that the success of the Legion was not its charism (there was none), nor was it the methodology (which everyone had to study and adhere to). It was that the Legion provided a brilliant shell game in which they recruited well-formed young people and put them to work. But it was families who had formed them, instilled in them a love of the Church (and the pope), and who supported the gift of self wherever it led. Moreover, those families (confused by the visible support of the hierarchy and the desire to be obedient) often ignored red flags, because they trusted the Church more than they trusted their own judgement—ironically, the very judgement that had initially formed and launched such faithful children into the Church!

Thus, the success of the Legion was because of its effective “cannibalism”: taking young souls, shoving them through a spiritually-warped and toxic grinder until there was nothing left, and then tossing them to the curb as “unfaithful” or “questioning” or “ungenerous.” I can assure you that the fact that the Legion still exists (even while Rome has shut down thriving, orthodox communities) is one of the great scandals of our time. Of course Maciel was a tremendous pervert, but here I speak of his methodology which was a preternaturally brilliant scheme to shred a key constituency in the Church.

Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree

This leads me to a second point. You would agree (and have written splendidly) about the inability of the Novus Ordo to transmit the fullness of the faith that we confess. Here is one angle for seeing why that is the case.

For decades, I sought orthodox parishes, befriended the most tremendous priests, and worked hard to edify those I could, whether through CCD, RCIA, or other apostolates dedicated to ongoing spiritual formation. On its own, the Novus Ordo is unassuming, relying for its power — beyond the res et sacramentum — on the aesthetics of the priest (and whatever committees he collaborates with) and the outside formation of the parishioners. If they read, study, pray, and pursue all kinds of formation outside of the Mass, then they can better distinguish the treasure hidden therein. The shabby parallel is Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. It was indeed a tree, created by God and loved as such, but its splendor depended on what the children offered for its decoration. Without that, it inspired little and edified even less.

Thus the way that “active participation” has been hijacked is actually a necessary fig leaf. Not only does it try to create interest and decoration to salvage an anemic liturgy, but it’s another form of cannibalism that confuses the faithful. When the laity work hard to help their pastor to manufacture a decent liturgy by adding what they can (to what was deliberately shredded in the “reform”!), it abuses their good will and depletes them rather than restoring them. And it confusedly invests them in the project — as though without them the scraggly tree would be revealed for what it is.

Yes, God is still present and operative, but instead of receiving Him on his terms, they are busy in the wrong way: the laity’s energy is drained like a battery to operate the liturgical machinery. They are shamed as ungenerous or unfaithful if they’re not lectors or ushers, etc. — analogously to the Legion cult, where people were pressured into always giving, doing, committing more, and were tossed aside if they did not deliver.

It should go without saying that all Catholics require ongoing formation, but there is a marked difference in the two rites, modern and traditional: the one is disguised, requiring a near Gnostic-like quest to figure out the hidden meaning, while the other simply needs to be understood and absorbed on its own terms. The one is a Charlie Brown tree that needs to be rescued from its poverty and invested with relevance; the other is a giant noble oak tree that towers above us, shelters us under itself, and gives us something solid and beautiful to lean on.

Three Generations

I’m pretty sure it was Gertrude Himmelfarb who, writing on the Victorians, explained that there were three generations in the span of Victoria’s reign: the first grounded in sincere Evangelical piety, the second going through the motions for convention’s sake, and the third devolving into rank cynicism upon witnessing the hypocrisy of the elites. It strikes me that there is a parallel between that era and the postconciliar period: both are roughly sixty years in length, with three generations to consider. The parallels don’t entirely track for many reasons, but we can see some resemblance when we look at successive generations being nursed on the pablum we have been given.

The first generation of new-Mass-users had, of course, been formed apart from and prior to the Novus Ordo (and the new catechesis that went with it), so, whether they acknowledged it or not, they brought to the new Mass an understanding and certain habits they had already acquired (also, let’s not forget some of them had endured wars, the depression, and other tragedies). Thus, when they sat in the pews, what was running through their heads had little to do with anything immediately in front of them. They were able to “fill out” a great deal in their minds and imaginations, the way an architect can look at a bunch of lines on a page and imagine a building.

Their children, though, didn’t have the same formative experiences and had only the new Mass and CCD to work with (unless a grandparent took a hand). This was thin gruel.

Now, in the mainstream Church, the grandchildren have called our bluff: they have nothing, or almost nothing. Members of this third generation have three responses available to them:

1. Leave, intuiting that no one is serious (from Father on down) in suggesting God Himself is on the altar and that this is a matter of one’s eternal destiny.

2. Stay, and work hard to decorate Charlie Brown’s tree, for if we don’t dress it up, the futility of the thing might become too obvious to deny.

3. Go to the traditional Latin Mass to be fed by the rich banquet of tradition, rather than thinking salvation depends on human action.

Peter, I know you usually rely on Church history, canonical arguments, and the liturgical elements in play. I just wanted to add some ideas about the human aspect that I’ve seen in my time as a Catholic. Though these seem like three disparate thoughts, I see them as deeply interwoven: the cannibalism of draining our laity of what they already possess until nothing is left; the emptiness of a rite that demands our activism to make it “work”; the stark alternatives facing young Catholics as they gaze out on a deserted wasteland dotted with gleaming beacons of tradition.

Genevieve, I see them the same way you do.—PAK

Thank you for reading, and may God bless you!