From Si Qua Virtus
Si Qua Virtus: Are you a cradle Catholic? Can you tell us a bit about your faith background?
FishEaters: I was baptized Catholic as a baby – but in the 1960s, right when everything went extremely wonky. My older brother and sister got the goods and were sent to Catholic schools, went to Mass on Sundays, etc., but by the time I got to the age of reason, all of that was over thanks to Vatican II. Nonetheless, and in spite of the fact that we didn't attend Protestant "churches," my parents were nominally Christian, and I was sent to a very "sound in the 3 Rs" Protestant school until the 5th grade.
Still though, I’ve always had a very Catholic imagination. The visual culture of Catholicism played a big role in that: when I’d go visit my Italian relatives, I’d see these beautiful paintings, icons, crucifixes, palm branches and other sacramentals that captivated me. I also had – and still have, it’s one of my treasures – my Dad’s little missal book that he used when he went to Catholic gradeschool. I was mesmerized by it all.
I was also blessed to have grown up with lots of books. Lots and LOTS of books. Literally thousands of them lived in my house, and I always had my face in one of them or the other. Both of my parents were big readers, and I got that gene for sure. They were also older than the parents of most kids my age, so my aesthetic sense was shaped by things like classical music, Big Band jazz, and old black and white movies as much as the popular culture prevalent in the shag carpeted, orange and avocado 70s. And thank God for that! One look at what men were wearing back then reveals what a blessing that was! The lapels! The leisure suits! The haircuts with the sideburns! From these and other horrors, Christ, spare us!
Anyway, when I got to be around 16, I became agnostic and spent some Hellish years in very serious despair, a word I don't use lightly at all; I'm blessed to have survived it. I was never an atheist, and never didn't want to believe, but I simply didn't. And because I'm naturally the philosophical type coupled with being very "Italian" and female emotionally, and being a loner outlier type in a thousand ways, I didn't handle unbelief too well. I went "pazz'" as my Dad would say – crazy. Got into lots of trouble, was a wild child and a half. During it all, though, I'd beg the "If-You-Are-There-God" for help, and that help finally came -- or I became ready to receive it -- in my early 30s. After becoming intellectually convinced of the existence of God, something I read opened my mind up to the idea of grace. From there, and in the context of working on forgiving some people I needed to forgive, I was given and ready to receive the gift of faith in Christ. After that, it was a matter of history to determine that the Catholic Church is what She claims to be.
SQV: Have you always been Traditional-leaning? Did you ever attend the Novus Ordo mass, and if so, what prompted you toward Traditionalism?
FishEaters: When I got confirmed after all the above, it was at a Novus Ordo parish -- with a priest who'd do things like refer to God as "She." I met with this priest weekly, and was allowed to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation during a regular Sunday Mass, after he was satisfied that I knew the Faith. But I was very dissatisfied, and continued to catechize myself in a much deeper way, coming to discern what exactly has changed in the presentation of Catholic teaching since "the Council from Hell." At the FishEaters website is a page called "Traditional Catholicism 101: A Brief Primer" where I summarize what I learned about the errors that have taken root since the Council -- things like the new ecclesiology, the false sense of collegiality, an either inflated or devalued view of the papacy, an eradication of the supernatural in favor of the natural, a false understanding of religious liberty, ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, a down-graded and critical view of Sacred Scripture, a desire to appease the world, and the bogus Paschal theology that, along with the will to appease Protestants, informs the spirit behind the new form of the Mass. There was no way to reconcile all that with what most Catholics were being taught. That’s all there is to it. Basic logic.
And while I was sorting through all that intellectually, the Catholic visual culture I mentioned earlier kept haunting me. The post-conciliar disappearance of a truly Catholic aesthetic was something I'd despised long before I even thought about getting confirmed. I was always sensitive to things like that, even as a little kid. I remember when I first got glasses, in the 2nd grade: I stepped outside to find that the world seemed to have gone from Impressionist to photo-realist. I was amazed to see things so crisply and clearly -- but was really annoyed that what I was looking at was a strip mall and billboards. Church-wise, I craved the sort of Catholicism I found in my Pops's little missal, not the strip mall and billboards variety that surrounded me. I craved beauty. And given that Truth and Beauty walk hand in hand, it's no wonder that beauty's disappeared from places where heresy prevails.
SQV: What was the genesis of the FishEaters website? How did the idea come to you and did you always intend it to have the form it does?
FishEaters: I started the site decades ago after becoming frustrated trying to bring Protestants to the Faith. I used to use chat software called "Pal Talk" to evangelize, but found that Protestants would ask the same things over and over and over, or, more often, would hurl the same accusations over and over and over while not really caring what I had to say in response. Ha, it was so bad, I even once set up a chat room called “Come Kick The Catholic.” They’d throw out their usual – “Why do you worship statues?” – and I’d respond with snark -- “We’re totally nuts; our statues talk back to us!” Anyway, I decided I was wasting my time and would better serve the cause if I just made a website that answered those questions for those who are actually interested in learning the answers.
As time went on, though, I became much more interested in teaching Catholics -- re-catechizing them and teaching them about the things too many of them were never taught in the first place. We have a few generations of Catholics who've been almost totally deprived of their birthright, which is not just a set of intellectual truths, but an entire way of life.
It just kills me to see people starving for beauty and ritual, for things that deeply reflect the Incarnation, but who are not taught and, so, head off for New Age nonsense or the bogus Wicca shtick. It's radically annoying how the witchy types think they own nature when the True God created it all and has given us a Church with Ember Days, the concept of "the Book of Nature", Mary Gardens, etc. They think they own the elements, but the True God Who created those elements gave us a Church that makes use of water in Baptism, of fire at Easter and Candlemas, of air in the exsufflations at Baptism or the blessing of Easter Water, and of earth in the way She treats old sacramentals, or the way Her people "beat the bounds" on Rogation Days, etc. We have these rich traditions that satisfy all the senses -- our senses being the means by which we understand the world -- and they're being ignored by too many since Vatican II. What the human element of the Church has done is akin to what that old fool lady did at the end of Cameron's "Titanic": taking a beautiful jewel -- whose monetary value could feed many families for years -- and throwing it to the bottom of the sea. Well, FishEaters's mission is to retrieve that jewel and show its beauty to the world.
SQV: How difficult was it to initially begin compiling all the information on the site? Was it difficult to locate Traditional Catholic materials, and to sift out anything modernist?
FishEaters: It was a ton of work – a hard-to-believe amount of work, looking back -- but it was easy because I was on FIRE. I ate it all up! I loved it! I spent many years doing little else but studying and writing. It was intense! But I loved learning about the Faith, and still do. After learning the Faith, it became easy to weed out the Modernist stuff, and it was easier yet when I just stuck to old texts. I live in a city with a great inter-library loan system, and I also had a friend who had access to a university’s library, so I was able to find most of what I needed.
SQV: Where do you find encouragement and motivation to keep up this important work?
FishEaters: I'm still studying and writing for the site, but have slowed down due to age, medical issues, and some frustration: I have a hard time getting support, mentions, links, donations, and all that sort of thing -- but as soon as I say something like that, I'll get a beautiful message from someone thanking me for the work, and I get all happy and inspired again. I just got a Christmas card from a lady who's been making use of "Nonna's Book of Moral Virtues," which I wrote earlier this year (available for free at FishEaters). When I think of a hardworking Catholic Mamma who's happy because her child is learning about the moral virtues in a fun way because of something I wrote -- well, it just kills me. It makes me feel useful and reassures me that I'm not wasting my time.
SQV: How bad do you see the circumstances we find ourselves in being?
FishEaters: I see us as on the edge of a precipice, clinging to it by our fingertips. And over us looms a Pope who seems to enjoy crushing down on them with his very un-Popish black leather shoes. I have every faith that Christ's promise is absolutely true – that the gates of Hell will never, ever prevail -- but am aware that a lot of Catholics are full of doubt. I'm seeing some despair, and a lot of anguish. I see a lot of fear, too, especially with regard to parents and grandparents worrying about what sort of Church the kids they love will inherit and learn from. It's heartbreaking, especially given how frustratingly needless it all is. And so many of the Catholics who remain -- typically of the Geritol-swigging, AARP crowd -- are as Catholic as Pelosi or Biden. But Tradition is growing, and it will win in the end. It thrives while the Novus Ordo wobbles like a punch-drunk tomato can of a boxer. The knock-out is imminent, at least in the West and in terms of what the average Mass-goer will see in his parish. What this Pope, future Popes, and the men in scarlet do and will do– well, who knows? We may well be living at the end of time. Or we may have a thousand years to go. Either way, we folks in the pews have to carry on as our ancestors always have, and trust that this story, like all comedies, has a happy ending.
As to the secular level, barring war, famine, or a really virulent pestilence that’s a lot more deadly than Covid, there's not much further to go to be as in bad a shape as we can get. We've ignored the Church's authentic teachings, redefined "freedom," and embraced a radical individualism that betrays the family. We've gotten ourselves into a state of almost complete sexual anarchy -- something I consider to our biggest problem, aside from faithlessness itself. Our laws not only don't support marriage and fatherhood (which requires the law to function), but they actively undermine them. Men are being displaced from family life, replaced by government that incentivizes single motherhood. Women wait until they're in their 30s and their beauty and fertility are wasted to even think of settling down -- and when they do, their hypergamy has them unwilling to settle for anything less than some imaginary Disney prince -- a Magic Man who's somehow willing to settle for an infertile, used-up, almost middle-aged woman who may well already have children by other men. There are no rules for courtship and dating, and the sexual default is always set to "on." The "sexual marketplace" now seems designed to “reward” only promiscuous women and the promiscuous 20% of the men able to attract their attention -- but the "reward" they get is only a short-lived hedonism that will leave them alone and without family life (and that's just the worldly ramifications!). The too few children that are allowed to be born are growing up without fathers and, therefore, without a healthy "reality principle," all of which results in a repeat of the cycle of madness. We're in big heap trouble.
The second of the biggest problems I think we have is the death of community, a problem rooted in a lack of piety and in the intentional disruption of traditional neighborhoods, something Dr. E. Michael Jones writes about in his "The Slaughter of Cities". The insane push for trust-destroying diversity, the race-based bean-counting, the constant attacks on European-derived cultures, the economic concerns that drive families apart as people move around for employment purposes -- these things are making it almost impossible for a husband and wife to raise kids in a community of people they'd entrust those kids to. It isn't good for women to be stuck in a house with kids all day -- with no one for those kids to play with, no adults to talk to, no other women for support. It used to be that Catholic women lived in extended families, in Catholic neighborhoods whose residents were on the same page with regard to the True, Good, and Beautiful. They didn't have to worry so much about the Satan-worshipers, porn addicts, drug abusers, secret jihadists, LGBT activists, BLMers, Jack Chick tract-loving Protestant evangelizers, and green-haired Wiccans living next door and messing with their kids' minds and bodies. Their kids could go out and play, the women had adults to socialize with, the men would come home and not have to serve as emotional release valves to lonely, frustrated wives, and life would roll along. Not so today. Now we're radically atomized, which makes us frustrated, lonely, neurotic, and primed to embrace escapism in the forms of social media, video games, drug abuse, and porn.
SQV: Where do you think so much of society’s ills stem from? What is the remedy?
FishEaters: Aside from the effects of the Fall, it all stems from a failure to obey the Church's authentic teachings. The remedy is to do everything we can to restore and spread those teachings, starting with our own families, friends, and parishes (but not stopping there!). We embrace God, we embrace His Church. We embrace His Church, we embrace the moral virtues. We embrace the moral virtues, we get social order.
With regard to the two social problems mentioned above, to end sexual anarchy, we need to get rid of no-fault divorce, stop expecting men to pay for children born outside of wedlock, end abortion, change custody laws so that custody defaults to fathers (all else being equal, barring abuse, of course), stop incentivizing single motherhood through welfare, start “slut-shaming” again (that is, calling out bad sexual behavior without falling into the ugly trap of judging souls or becoming prudes), and enforce our laws against obscenity and prostitution (do you realize how many young women are effectively prostituting themselves these days? Sugar Babies, Only Fans, other means of internet hustling – it’s astounding!)
With regard to the second problem – the problem of community -- I’m all for traditionalist Catholics, working in groups of families, buying up property around traditional parishes so they’re surrounded by families with children who are all in basic agreement as to right and wrong. (Trads tend to focus solely on rural life, but that’s a mistake! Not all are meant or are able to live in the country. Our cities are just as important, and need to be taken back!) I imagine Catholics buying up small apartment buildings and filling them with other Catholics, or buying up all the houses on a cul-de-sac so that an entire street is staked out as Catholic -- safe for kids to play in outdoors, and populated by people who want to live lives centered on the liturgical calendar. Orthodox Jews manage to have their own neighborhoods staked out by eruvim, so why can’t we do the equivalent?
SQV: Is reclaiming of the culture important? And is it possible?
FishEaters: It's extremely important! And, with God, all things are possible! Your goal of reclaiming the arts is crucial! I love what you’re trying to do! Thank you!
SQV: What are some of the big things you think today’s Catholics are getting wrong?
FishEaters: I mentioned my list of post-conciliar errors earlier, so I'll focus on my fellow traditionalists here because I see a few big problems in our corner of the world.
I'm concerned about trads overreacting to the problems we're facing. I too often see Catholics take the pendulum just as far in the opposite direction instead of stopping at the sweet spot in the middle. Note that I am not at all referring to compromise, especially with regard to Truth; I'm talking about overreacting and missing the mark. For ex., I fear some parents are becoming overprotective in reaction to the madness, and putting their kids in the situation of growing up feeling like aliens or weirdos -- too out of touch with popular culture, feeling stupid when confronted with various realities. I think it's crucial for parents to not mistake ignorance for innocence. Christ was perfectly innocent, but knew everything about the deepest of depravities man can get up to. And some parents are so fearful that they become joyless and humorless, but my take is that if you want your children to embrace the Faith all of their lives, have them grow up in a joyful Catholic home with lots of music, activities, games, and laughter. A priggish, dour, fear-based approach will fail you. And them.
In the same vein, I see an overreaction to the evils of feminism and the growing awareness that, in spite of what the WASP variety of Victorian believed, women aren't pure and sexless earth-bound angels with greater moral virtue than men have. I see in some an outright misogyny (another word I don't use lightly) and a desire to enforce their ideas of gender roles so tightly as to quash individual differences (hey, parents, if you want to chase your kids away from the Faith, be sure to tell your tomboy girl she must wear pink lacy things, and force your artistic son to put down the design books and pick up a hated football!).
I see a lot of LARPing going on, too. I can understand why a confused young man might adopt the persona of a Victorian gentleman, or why such a young female might put on the airs of a 1950s housewife. The young are always adopting stances, trying on hats, "faking it 'til they make it" and find a persona that truly reflects who they are. But when I see it in adults, it's not just bizarre, it's scary -- scary because it betrays psychological disturbance, and because it freaks people out, turns them off from the Faith. The conflation of "modern" with "modernist," the feigned prudery, the put-on language, the mistaking of "secular" for "evil" -- I can't stand it. And when personal preferences are raised to the level of "dogma," I want to scream. "Catholic women don't wear pants; it's immodest and therefore evil." Well, you might not like to see women in pants, and I might prefer to wear dresses (and I do), but if either of us talks like that, we need to sit in a corner for a while. It's maddening, and I've heard the same sorts of things about everything from secular music to video games. If you want to burn your rock and roll albums, fine! Do what you think you need to do (and maybe for you, that would be the right thing to do). But don’t go making sins out of your personal dislikes, and know that I'll be listening to my Led Zeppelin for a long time to come, thank you very much. I much prefer a world with "Kashmir," "Ramble On," and "In the Light" to one without them.
Anyway, that sort of thing is what I fear about trying to establish traditionalist communities. I love the idea, and think Catholics should definitely work toward all that – but can also envision a bunch of LARPers and busybodies ruining it for everyone. I can imagine St. Karen’s pinched glares when overhearing the Jimmy Page licks coming from my place. “And she’s always up all night, too! And she said she used to be a ‘wild child’! And she smokes! And I heard she rented a non-Hallmark movie from the library!” Meh. So annoying.
SQV: And what are some things today’s Catholics are getting wrong that they may not have considered?
FishEaters: I doubt I've thought of anything that others haven't considered, but I do wish that more Catholics would do what you're doing in trying to reclaim the arts. I'd love to see Catholics doing street theater, putting on medieval Mystery or Miracle Plays, forming Gregorian chant flash mobs, writing scripts, making films, making music, painting and sculpting, doing stand-up, drawing comics, coding video games, coming up with apps, etc. It's Christmas: go caroling, and throw in some "Puer nátus in Béthlehem"! And keep caroling until the Epiphany: that'll throw some people -- and invite questions! "Hey, ya Catholic idiot, Christmas has been over for 12 days!" "Not so, Chief. You see, the traditional view of Christmas is.." Then you might get a convert. I mean, who wouldn’t at least be attracted by the idea of twelve whole days of Christmas? Right?
I also wish more Catholics would do what I'm doing: spreading the Faith -- not Catholicism Lite, but trad-style, with all the dogmas and traditions intact. I want to live in a world in which the Rosary is prayed, people reflexively bow their heads at the Name of Jesus, St. Barbara's Day branches are blooming at Christmastime, and the dead are not forgotten. I want to live in a world in which Catholic parishes are the centers of communities, and those parishes offer sound doctrine and all of the sacramental rites in the traditional way. I want to live in a world in which Catholic homemakers have their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and neighbor women around to socialize with and get support from. I want to live in a world in which Catholic men have the camaraderie of other strong Catholic men who live next door instead of an hour and a half away. I want to live in a world that is ordered to the Logos, and where Beauty abounds. So even though I get tempted to quit when I go through periods of frustration and feeling ineffective, I'll likely keep doing what I do until I can do it no longer. And I hope you do the same, Mr. Laurence. I really do.
FishEaters
Great interview, and thanks for this in-depth coverage, and as a fellow FE member, I hope it attracts quality newbies~~Fionnchu.
ReplyDeleteGreat interview, and thanks for this in-depth coverage, and as a fellow FE member, I hope it attracts quality newbies~~Fionnchu.
ReplyDelete