Fifty years a Catholic in 2021

 On April 10, 1971, I was received into the Church during the Easter vigil Mass as a new convert.  I was fifteen years old.

I read and prayed my way into the Church.  I'd "met" St. Therese of Lisieux in my mother's Manual of Prayers, and was pretty sure I wanted to be a Carmelite nun.  In order to do that, I had to be, you know, a Catholic, so I pursued getting conditional baptism.

The Church that I entered in good faith was beginning to change, but the depredations of Vatican II hadn't yet gotten traction in our parish.  Our Monsignor, a crusty old guy, likely fought them as long as he could.

Easter vigil 2021 will be the fiftieth anniversary of my reception into the Church.

 

Yesterday I read about the Pachamama coin minted by the Vatican.

 

Had the Catholics simply risen from the pews when the deformed liturgy and weird practices started in the 1970s, and filed out the door, taking their wallets with them, the whole thing would have ended in about six weeks.

But we didn't have the Internet.  We didn't know they were lying - the avid new priests, the nuns in pant suits, the bishops.  "The Pope said."  "Rome requires it."  Some of the innocent ones were really involved and accepting.  The experienced Catholics knew it was all wrong.

It's still wrong.

A church is in schism when it is no longer the same church.  It veers into theology and practices that are different from the original, with the intent of separating permanently.  You can tell when this happens because of the gaslighting and scorn about the church they're leaving.  You know what a cult does, right?  It keeps you away from your family.  Hard truth:  the bullies who tell you the SSPX is in schism are lying to you to keep you from finding out what you lost due to the "Vantifa" who went around jack-hammering altar rails and tossing altar Missals in the trash and tearing rosaries out of old ladies' hands.  They're still out there today, shaming and scolding people who kneel for communion, or women who wear veils, or anyone who reads Romans 1 and asks uncomfortable questions.

The "Catholic Church" of today - oh, sorry - "Catholic Community" - no longer resembles in any meaningful way the Church I entered fifty years ago.  There is no longer even a dotted-line correspondence between the two "forms" of the Latin rite Mass.  (I'm so old I can remember when there were only four Eucharistic prayers in the new form.)  The new church has a new calendar, a sprawling lectionary (except, you know, Romans 1:26-32), all new values, new vestments, vernacular language, new architecture, a new catechism, and is very progressive - meaning you never hear about hell or purgatory.  There is no dress code.  No rectory, where diocesan priests were watched over by fierce Irish widows abundantly aware of the temptations of the world and determined to stop them at the door.  Et cetera.

How are Catholics who continue to give money to, and attend, today's putative "church" not in schism from the original Roman Catholic Church, although they don't realize it?  It's fixable.  It's happened before.  The changes unfold, everyone just goes along... Just leave.  Go where you can be Catholic again.

Who still seriously thinks the SSPX is in schism?  Explain exactly how, please; show all your work and make no unnecessary assumptions.  Oh, and as you do so, remember:  I lived through it as a young woman.  There was a family on my street that attended the SSPX chapel.  There was another family that despised them.  Both sets of kids were my friends.  It was a terrible time.  I vividly remember reading in the newspaper about Cardinal Suenens et al imposing the sacrilege of communion in the hand, and the dismal scandal that followed.  (Pope Paul VI may certainly be a saint - that's between him and God - but I'm really puzzled about the choice as a model for progress in holiness.  I can do "dithering coward" all on my own.  I don't need an example.)

Jesus brought me into the Church.  Jesus has watched over me and preserved me to this moment, including sending angels a couple of times that I know of.  I report to Him, not to the men in nighties who flock around the altar with women in pant suits and sing banal songs to the waving hand of the cantor.

Because of the fallout from the brutally-imposed changes that took place in the Church in my diocese, I left off trying to be a Catholic after only about eight years.  I am at this point ineligible for any sacraments.  But I still mark the day, with sadness.  I mean, seriously, people ... modernism.  Fatima.  Quito.  (h/t with thanks to Steve Skojec, who has the fortitude and the writing chops to set forth these excellent resources at 1 Peter 5.)

It only took fifty years.

The Church was very dear to me.  I was only fifteen; it was a huge life choice to make.  Bait and switch.  Ha, ha, you idiot!  Today I cannot do anything novus ordo-ish.  It's a proximate occasion of sin for me.  I was told by my betters that we were to use our informed conscience; well, my conscience is informed, and I don't want anything to do with any of it.  It still hurts, though.  It always will.

If you want to know more about how it happened, read The Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peikoff.  Part 1 is a great "Cliff's Notes" about the bad philosophy used to break down our Church by infiltration through the universities.  Someday I'll do a post about that.  People really need to understand that this is not something new or weird.  It's planned, it's a mortal error, and it can be stopped.  Can Catholics figure this out in time?