How I Became an Evil Trad

Many of you may have read my conversion story on my old blog, The New Crusade. I ended it with:

OK, I'm a Catholic! How did I get to be an Evil Trad? That's the next instalment. 

I never did write that post, but here it is now.

First I should probably explain the 'Evil Trad' bit. Some of you may have noticed the logo in my sidebar, 'I'm an Evil Trad'. 

The 'New Crusade' was one of several blogs written by Traditional Catholics who formed the 'League of Evil Traditionalists'. Some of us sort of fell by the wayside, as I did, becoming concerned with life, marriage, and raising children. One member of the League became a Traditional Priest. Others continued to blog and went on to bigger and better things. Steve Skojec was one, who, until recently, ran the successful and influential blog, One Peter Five. Another was Hilary White, who now writes for The Remnant and other publications, as well as blogging on Church matters at 'What's Up With FrancisChurch?' and, on more personal matters, at 'Orwell's Picnic'. (Links to all three in the sidebar.)

In fact, that conversion story was written because Miss White chided me for being only a news aggregator, challenging me to write something, instead of just linking to news articles.

At any rate, let's move on! How did I become a Trad? Well, I am viscerally a conservative. As I wrote in the early days of this blog, 

In a biting satire on the politics of Britain, W.S. Gilbert wrote, in Act II of Iolanthe, 

'(E)very boy and every gal That’s born into the world alive Is either a little Liberal Or else a little Conservative!'

I must say that I'm not sure I agree with him. Having been a child, having known many children, and having raised a few, I'm convinced that every boy and every gal that's born into the world alive, is actually born a conservative.

Children do not like change. They are comfortable in their own 'old' ways. As an example, I have worn a beard for almost my entire adult life. I have shaved twice for jobs that prohibited facial hair and once on a whim. At that time, we had three small children, two boys, four and two, and a daughter who was just a few months old. We were worried that my being clean shaven would upset the baby. She didn't seem to be bothered, but her four year old brother regressed, demanding a bottle, messing his pants, and telling me in no uncertain terms, 'You're not my Daddy!' Needless to say, the beard made a rapid reappearance!

I was one child who never changed. True, in my early twenties, I flirted with left-wing politics, but it was a very short phase, and other than that, I have been a conservative all my life. When I was received into the Church, I was in a very conservative Diocese. As hard as it is to imagine now, when the Diocese of Lincoln, in which I am blessed to live, is the only holdout, as far as I know, our Ordinary did not allow the laity to receive the Cup!

I well remember the first time I ever saw the laity receive the Precious Blood. I had ventured into a neighbouring Diocese for the baptism of a friend's child. When I saw people queuing up to receive the Cup, I was mystified! When I got home, I went to my Pastor and asked him what was going on. He told me that Rome had granted an indult for the practice, and it was common in most Dioceses, but our Bishop didn't allow it.

I later moved into that Diocese, where I would live for the next 15 years. I've always been fascinated by liturgiology, going back to my youth as an Anglo-Catholic in the Episcopal Church, so I had studied the Mass, knew quite a bit of its history and had a fair grasp of the rubrics. When I got to my new Parish, I was horrified! It was in a university town, with all that implies. A very liberal Parish in a liberal Diocese. Liturgical abuse was rampant, but it got worse.

Our Pastor was sent to Rome to study, and the Parish was turned over to the Capuchins. Our new Pastor proceeded to 'wreckovate' the Church, He pulled out the beautiful old Altars, moved the Tabernacle into a tiny side chapel, and had the 'Presider's Chair' placed directly behind the new Altar, like a Papal Throne.

He was an active middle-aged man, who played handball on a regular basis, but he would sit on his 'throne' whilst laypeople distributed Holy Communion. Before the indult was granted for 'acolettes', as I call female 'altar boys', he, at least, did not have females technically serving the Altar, but he always managed to find a place for several girls in the procession as crucifer, torch-bearers, etc. As soon as the indult was issued, BAM! The boys, of course, didn't like the idea of serving with a girl, so almost immediately, the bulk of the altar servers were female. but he was kewl! He wrote a regular, weekly column for the Diocesan paper on rock music, which I'm sure no teenager ever read, but that I'm equally sure was popular with the liberal intellectuals in the Parish. I think that my worst moment, though, was in July of 1989. I was already a Counter-Revolutionary, and I had to sit through a sermon honouring the French Revolution, lauding it, and telling us how great a thing it had been, without a single mention of the tens of thousands of Catholics slaughtered by it, or any reference to the extreme persecution the Church had undergone because of it.  And little has changed! I left that Parish in 1999 and the Diocese in 2007, but I had cause to hear Mass at the Parish a couple of months ago. The sermon was typical Vatican II pap, and with the exception of the Priest and one or two of the half dozen or so Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, there wasn't a male in the Sanctuary. All the servers and the bulk of the EMHCs were female!

Also, during my early days in the Church, after a postulancy and novitiate, I took my vows as a Third Order Carmelite in the Order of the Brethren of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, taking as my name in religion 'Mary of the Immaculate Conception', for the reason I explained in my conversion story. This will be a bit important later in my journey.

The whole time I was continuing to read and study, not only the liturgy, but the history of the Church, and about the crisis in the Church since the Second Œcumenical Council of the Vatican. I read 'The Remnant', 'Approaches', and corresponded with its editor, Hamish Fraser (R+I+P), and its successor, 'Apropos', edited by Hamish's son Antony, after Hamish's death. I read 'Christian Order', edited by Fr Paul Crane, S.J. (R+I+P), one of the last orthodox Jesuits, and as much as I could understand, given my abysmal French, of several Traditional French reviews.

I was slowly drifting into full-blown Traditionalism. In 1991, I was invited to speak at the Catholic Voice International conference in Chicago on the subject of 'Christ the King and Monarchism' The first night I was there was the evening of All Saints' Day, and we were privileged to attend Holy Mass at the Church of St John Cantius, staffed by the Canons Regular of St John Cantius. It was in the Tridentine Rite and being on All Saints Day, all the relics possessed by the Parish were displayed for veneration. The experience thrilled me to the depths of my being! The only Tridentine Rite Mass I had attended since the deformations of the post-Conciliar era had been in a very modernistic Church, and to see it celebrated in the grandeur of a Church built in the late 1890s was amazing. On All Souls Day, we attended Mass in a convent chapel which was very plain, but it was still an amazing experience. On the Sunday, I was privileged to hear Mass celebrated by Father Nicholas Gruner (R+I+P), the 'Fatima Priest'.

Amongst other attendees were Michael Davies (R+I+P), at one time President of Una Voce International, who gave the keynote speech, 'The Reign of Christ the King' (a transcript of which is available online here), Gary Potter, Charles Coulombe, and Roy L. Moore, a Distributist activist, Traditionalists, every man jack of them! We had a long chin wag in my hotel room into the wee hours of the morning, minus only Mr Davies, an American football fan, who was attending a Chicago Bears game.

Surrounded by these men, discussing the state of the Church and the world with them, pitched me headlong into a full-blown Traditionalism, Traditionalism in my Catholicism and Catholic Integralism in my politics.

I moved, in 1999, from the university town to the Metropolitan See of our Province, and the house I bought was directly across the street from the Archbishop's Cathedral. In fact, the picture of the Church on the front of each week's bulletin was taken from my driveway. The Parish was tolerable unless I made the mistake of attending the 'Teen Mass' on Sunday evening. Not many 'teens' attended, but there were plenty of 'kewl' adults playing the guitar, etc. So few teens attended that I was usually tapped to help take up the collection.

However, two things happened soon after I moved to the city. One, I discovered that there was a Latin Mass Community, staffed by the FSSP. I first attended Mass there on the Feast of St Felix Valois, the 20th of November. The Pastor, at the time, was a Frenchman. He preached on St Felix, bringing in his, probably apocryphal, connection to the Valois branch of the Royal House of France. After Mass, I recounted my experience in 1989 of hearing the Revolution praised at Mass. He replied, rather sharply, 'You'll hear none of that here!'

The second was that I met the Priest who was to become my spiritual director. I worked in management for a large chain of drugstores, and Father was one of my customers. His Church was just a few blocks from my house and the store in which I worked (there were five Catholic Churches within walking distance of my house, and you could hear the Angelus ring from all of them at 6.00 12.00, and 18.00!), and his Saturday evening Mass was timed in such a way that I could get off work, and walk over to the Church quite easily. I also learned that many of the men in my new Latin Mass Community went to him for Confession.

He was a former Jesuit, formed and ordained before the Council. He had spent some time in the US Army Chaplain Corps, and when he was discharged, he looked around at the 'new', post-Conciliar Jesuit Order, said, 'This is not the Order I joined', and walked away. Walked away with no laicisation, proceeded to 'marry', have children, and have a successful business career. After he had been widowed for some time, and we had gotten a much more conservative Ordinary, appointed by Pope John Paul II, replacing one appointed by Pope Paul VI, the Archbishop called him and said, 'Matt, don't you think it's about time to come home?' A short time later he was Pastor of the Church just a few blocks from my house.

Whilst he had learned the Tridentine Rite Mass before ordination, in the intervening years he had forgotten it, so he celebrated the Novus Ordo Missae of Paul VI, but he celebrated it according to the rubrics, and extremely reverently. However, his Latin remained solid enough that he recited his Breviary in the language of the Church, and when I confessed to him, he always used the Latin formula of Absolution. Also, when I received Communion from him, he administered it to me in the old Latin form, rather than the truncated English, 'the Body of Christ'.

At any rate, by this point, I was a Traditionalist, no ifs, ands, or buts! I had the Sacraments available to me in a reverent celebration, whether in Latin or English, and I had solid spiritual direction.

The only blip was when several people in my Latin Mass Community, who knew I was a Third Order Carmelite, approached me about the possibility of forming a group in our Community. After the publication of the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei, by Pope John Paul II, I had written to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei asking permission to bind myself to the pre-Conciliar Rule of the Third Order and to recite the unreformed Little Office or Breviary. His Eminence Paul, Cardinal Mayer responded that since the old Rule was stricter than the new, and the old Offices were longer than their replacements, I would be doing more than the Rule required, and graciously granted me permission. I then renewed my vows in the hands of my spiritual director.

Assuming that my Superiors in the First Order would be overjoyed at a new Third Order group, I blithely wrote them, asking permission. In reply, I received a letter that said whilst they did not deny the Holy Father's authority and right to issue the motu proprio, they gravely doubted the wisdom of him doing so. They added that whilst they respected the Priests of the FSSP, they were deeply suspicious of the ecclesiology held by members of FSSP Parishes and Communities. In other words, they didn't trust us, and the answer was, 'no'.

I then wrote to the Reverend Prior General of the Order in Rome, asking if this was the policy of the Order, and if not, would he grant permission for the group to form? After waiting months for a reply, I wrote the Reverend Prior General of the Discalced Order of Carmelites, asking the same. Do you know that after almost 20 years, I'm still waiting for an answer to either of those letters!

I later moved to Canada, into a quite liberal Archdiocese, and I was only able to attend the Tridentine Mass on a few occasions, but I held on to my Traditional Catholic Faith, continuing to study and pray in the old ways. When I returned to the States, it was to a reasonably conservative Diocese, wherein I was blessed that the Pastor of my Parish and his assistants were all foreign Priests. One was a Vietnamese refugee who had finished his seminary studies in the US, but my Pastor was from India, and the other assistant was from Mexico. As a result, my Faith was untouched. In fact, at one point, I was in hospital, and the Vietnamese assistant came to visit me. On my bedside table, I had a copy of Fr F.X. Lasance's 'My Prayer-Book'. Father saw it and beamed, exclaiming, 'You have this!?'. I replied, 'Yes, Father, and I also have this!', holding up my one volume, English language Roman Breviary.

After six years in that Parish, I moved to my current home in the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, about which I posted here, and I later shared a post from the Liturgy Guy, entitled. 'Why Aren't Other Dioceses Looking to Lincoln'. So! That brings us to the end of my religious and theological journey. From an evangelical protestant, through Anglicanism and Orthodoxy, into Catholicism, and eventually the full Traditional practice of the Catholic Faith.

A friend and I were chatting after Mass a few years ago and he mentioned that he was being Confirmed at the Midnight Mass of Christmas. I congratulated him, of course, but I told him that I had been a Catholic for 37 years, over half my life. I said that I had often been frustrated and even angry at events in the Church, but in all that 37 years, I had never, even for a moment, regretted my decision that September evening in 1980! I give thanks to Our Blessed Lord, and I thank Our Holy Mother, my Guardian Angel, and my Patrons for their prayers that brought me home to the full, undiluted Faith and practice of the One, Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church!