Beware of Traditional Catholic Burnout

Mr Hall has some excellent advice for newcomers to Tradition. Don't overdo it! You'll have a lifetime to learn all the ins and outs of the Faith.

From Crisis

By Kennedy Hall

Discovering the traditional Catholic faith can be like drinking through a firehose of wonder and zeal, but eventually you must simply live it, without burning out.

Numerous Catholics have discovered Catholic Tradition in the last few years, many of them because of the lockdowns in 2020 that forced Catholics to think outside the box if they wanted to have access to sacraments. In addition, in 2020, liturgies were streamed online throughout that Holy Week, so many Catholics who had never given the Traditional Mass a second thought found themselves virtually engulfed in a ritual that was so Catholic and yet so foreign and different than what they had ever seen in their parishes.

As a result, traditional parishes and chapels around the world have been bursting at the seams with new parishioners, and the Latin Mass and all that is associated with it continues to gain steam. 

First experiences with the Old Mass vary from person to person. Some people stumble upon a grandiose High Mass for the first time and are raptured into a new spiritual plane at first glance; others read their way into Catholic Tradition and attend their first Low Mass in a mission chapel at 3 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon and are confused when they look up from the hand missal—which they don’t yet understand—only to realize Mass is half over and they weren’t even sure when it had started.

That first period of time when one engulfs himself in Tradition is often received like a whirlwind; we might say it is like drinking from a fire hose. There is so much to learn, and it is so pleasant to learn so many things we might have intuition about but had never heard fleshed out theologically or from the pulpit. Virtually everyone who discovers Tradition will come to understand the gravity of the crisis in the Church and learn about things like the Third Secret of Fatima —whether fully revealed or not—and a host of topics otherwise taboo or forbidden in the mainstream parish setting.

There are also many hardships that accompany diving into Tradition, which most of us experience. I remember that when I discovered so many wonderful things about our history and liturgies, all I wanted to do was share them with my friends. I was naive and thought everyone would be as happy to learn what I had learned as I was. However, I quickly realized that not a few of my confreres with whom I had attended the local New Mass for years were less than enthused to hear what I had to say. Now, these people were not liberals and were very conservative, all considered; but when I crossed the proverbial Rubicon from the New Mass to the Old Mass, all of a sudden Catholics I admired used words like “extreme” and “schism” to describe the path I found myself on. 

My experience is not unique.

Eventually, the honeymoon phase of finding Catholic Tradition wears off, and we transition from a phase of overwhelming discovery to a phase of implementing and living newfound devotions and rituals in our lives. This is when things get hard.

At first, driving an hour or more to attend Mass doesn’t seem like a big deal; but then those roads get icier as winter lags on. At a certain point, you realize that your former friends really aren’t going to come around and see your side, and that stings. You also come to realize that being a “Trad” can paint you with a scarlet letter, and playing nice with the institutions in your diocese often becomes more difficult.

Some parents are already 10+ years into raising children, and now they have to rethink things like modesty and, in good conscience, need to pull their teens out of the local youth group, which was always Modernist, but they didn’t see it before.

It is also hard for newbie Trads to figure out just how “trad” they should be in their home lives. Should we attend every liturgy during Holy Week with our little children who can’t be expected to sit still for a four-hour Good Friday liturgy? How many devotions should a Traditional Catholic family have going at one time? Do we fast from midnight before Mass? What about Lent? Is it enough to fast like Catholics in the post-war period, or should we be trying to do an “old-school” Lent like the Medieval period? And so on.

We are in a unique time in history for Catholics, where we find ourselves having to fight not only the culture but also much of the hierarchy—tragically—to live Catholic lives like the saints we read about. Traditional Catholics are in a constant state of fighting an uphill battle; and unfortunately, many of us are in a position where a type of “do-it-yourself” approach is the only option.

All of this makes things arduous and tiring, and the risk of burnout is real.

Our family embraced Catholic Tradition in 2018, and while we are not veterans compared to many Trads who have been fighting the good fight for decades, there are a few things we have learned that I believe can prove helpful.

1. Don’t exhaust or overextend yourself trying to prove the value of Catholic Tradition to everyone you know, especially if it falls on deaf ears. Yes, we all must share the Faith when called upon, but it isn’t your job to argue with everyone or convince other Catholics of things they don’t want to hear.

2. Trust the wisdom of the Church regarding fasting and penance. Yes, fasting laws were more rigorous in former centuries, but you aren’t from those centuries. By all means, challenge yourself, but if you are an average North American, it is foolish—and maybe prideful—to think you can go from snacking and eating like the average person to attending the pre-1955 Holy Week emaciated on an empty stomach.

3. Catholic Tradition is not the same thing as “Catholic Conspiracy.” I do not use the word conspiracy as a pejorative, but it is good to remember that obsessing over every jot and tittle of the messages from an apparition or revelation that predicts the crisis in the Church may not help your spiritual life. When you stand before Christ at death, you will not be quizzed on whether or not the Third Secret of Fatima was truly revealed, important as that topic is.

4. You are a Traditional Catholic in 2025 not 1025. You live in the “modern world,” which means you use electricity, screens, cars, and so on. Much of what is offered to us in modernity is not good; this is true. But God created you to live now, so don’t attempt to recalibrate aspects of your life that make things unnecessarily arduous. Living in a state of grace and embracing Catholic Tradition is challenging enough.

5. Cut yourself and your children some slack. Catholics in the past would often not bring their small children to Mass until they were of the age of reason. Villages had parish churches with multiple Masses that were a stones-throw away from home. People lived multigenerationally, and parents would often go to Mass and leave the little ones at home, and grandparents would go later. Also, when you read old manuals, you find that it was common practice for nursing mothers and pregnant women to be dispensed from attending Mass. If you had a long night with the baby, please understand that Mass isn’t going anywhere, and it will be there next week.

6. Take advice, but think for yourself. There are a lot of opinions out there in the world of Traditional Catholicism about basically every topic, but you should make your own decisions and not simply do what someone else says you should do. There are many ways to educate your children, implement seasonal devotions into your home, etc. Do what works for your family.

7. Avoid trying to keep up with the Trad Joneses. Some families pray all the Rosary mysteries each day, some others struggle to find the time to get through one set of mysteries with crying babies and toddlers swinging from ceiling fans. One day, you will be a fully grown Traditional Catholic, like the people you admire at your parish, but you didn’t see the decades of hard work they put in to get where they are. Like you, they were lost and confused and exhausted twenty years ago.

8. Don’t assume Traditional Catholicism will fix your personality. If you are like me, you can be a huge jerk, and even a million Rosaries won’t make you a better husband, father, and person in general if you don’t do things to become more virtuous. Catholicism is about loving Our Lord and spending eternity with Him, and Pharisees have a hard time getting to Heaven. If there is any point to Traditional Catholicism, it is to become holy, and adopting a lifestyle that tells the world you are a “Trad” in the external sense will do nothing for you if you don’t do the hard work of becoming a saint.

9. Don’t take it personally when Catholics who are resistant to Tradition look at you funny. We need to remember that being a Traditional Catholic is countercultural and sort of abnormal. Of course, it should be the norm—because it should never have gotten to the point where praying old prayers and attending old rituals would make you the weird one. Alas, the mainstream left Tradition behind half a century ago, so, for the time being, you are the weird one to them. Don’t be bitter, because people seeking holiness shouldn’t be bitter. Live your faith, love your neighbor, and remember that sticks and stones may break your bones, but being called a rigid schismatic shouldn’t hurt you.

10. Have fun! Tradition is more than old catechisms and the Old Mass. It is art, and music, and dancing—the good kind—and laughter, and great books, and feasts, and blissfully innocent children running around in pretty dresses. It is the best; and despite all the hardships, it is a life worth living. Red wine is as Catholic as incense, and the body is a temple of the Holy Ghost, so it ought to be incensed from time to time with sweet-smelling Virginia blends. If Traditional Catholicism isn’t bringing you a type of happiness and internal peace that you have never had before, then please read this again—because you need to ensure that you don’t burn out.