My Path to Tradition
Tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up, and what was your level of exposure to Catholicism as a child and as a young adult?
I grew up in a town of 1200 in western Oregon, a logging town. My exposure to Catholicism came from the few Catholic kids in school and the stories my father would tell about his time in a Catholic hospital in the late 1940’s. A young nun smuggled a watermelon to his room under her habit for him and his roommate. That kindness stuck with me. My strongest connection to Catholicism came through Tolkien and Shakespeare during my long Protestant winter that lasted into my thirties.
My journey to Catholicism was mainly intellectual. I was dating a Catholic woman who didn’t know her faith well. She began attending my Protestant “church” with me, but had no intentions of converting. So I grabbed something Catholic to read and debunk: the Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi. I pointed out how silly and fantastical the stories sounded. That failed miserably. Then I heard about this Catechism business, so I figured that wouldn’t be too hard to pick apart. This was the “first new Catechism in four hundred years.” Halfway through I was ready to be Catholic; however, it was too close to Easter so I was made to wait until the next Easter, over a year away. That was a bitter pill—but I swallowed it. The year after, I entered the Church.
What experience first piqued your interest in Tradition?
I think my interest in Tradition was always a driving force in my search for Home. From the time I realized that Catholicism was something I had to seriously consider, I knew that I wanted the full-throated battle-cry Catholicism that I read about and saw reflected in the lives of the saints and in history, even as I found myself wading through the “church in the round” Catholicism of my first parish. The cognitive dissonance was real and intense at times, driving me to constant frustration.
But my path to Tradition was not straight. I grew up reading Tolkien in junior high and high school. I believe it may have begun there. His Middle-earth could have only been conceived in a thoroughly Traditional mind; it made no sense in modernity. One had to really enter into Tolkien’s rich and delicious world, and it left modernity tasting stale and flat, lifeless and spoiled. It planted a nameless desire in my young mind that was later buttressed and fed by studying Shakespeare for a year in college, not because I had to, but for the sheer joy of it. In fact, prior to college I had spent six years in the military, ending in a deployment to Saudi Arabia. While there I had secured, dragged around, and read the complete works of Shakespeare.
After conversion to Catholicism and while I was attending the Novus Ordo, I read everything I could get my hands on and eventually got a hold of a Michael Davies book—I believe it was Liturgical Shipwreck—but I was quickly scared away by those who warned me of other converts who had “run in the front door of the Church only to run right out the back.”
Then I heard, in the very early 2000’s, of a Latin Mass being said at St. Patrick’s in Portland, Oregon. I went once and was stunned. The schola was singing arrangements by William Byrd and they were amazing. Still, I returned to my Novus Ordo parish two hours south and suffered with absence of beauty as well as sometimes questionable homilies and lack of reverence. Underneath all that, what I was seeing was a river of cognitive dissonance. I was told that what I had fallen in love with was the Church Triumphant, and that what I was frustrated with was the Church Militant with her imperfect skin and warts—I had simply conflated the two.
I married in 2004 and we eventually adopted our son. We began attending our neighborhood parish a fifteen-minute walk away, because it had twenty-four-hour Adoration and we had heard that the priest was Traditional. He wore a cassock and preached like a firebrand Protestant preacher with lots of energy and passion. Once a month he offered a Latin Mass using the 1962 missal. But he also did healing masses and professed charismatic gifts such as some of the Protestant sects profess. He used Neal Lozano’s book Unbound in the confessional, something the archbishop supported. Neal came out of the Jesus People Movement of the late 60s-early 70s. It all became too much—I didn’t become Catholic and lose my old church “family,” as well as strain my relationship with siblings and parents, only to be half-Catholic and half a brand of Protestantism I had rejected as a Protestant! I knew then that there was more to the claims of Archbishop Lefebvre than I had been told. Likewise, all was not well where I was. And further, that “where I was” was the Novus Ordo in a nutshell—well-meaning, passionate priests were left with no guide, while bad priests had a blank check. It was a mad synthesis, a split-personality church. My archbishop had already abandoned us during the COVID lockdowns.
It was time to look for the priests who wouldn’t abandon us, for those who held to a sure norm, the unshakable and time-tested Truth. We had, through a process of elimination, only one place left.
We looked to the Society of St. Pius X, and we have not been disappointed.
What issues did you wrestle with during your conversion to Tradition, and how have you found resolutions to those concerns?
My first concern was simply, can I attend a Society chapel in good conscience and receive the Sacraments? I found exceptionally good help here by listening to the SSPX podcasts on YouTube. This shortened the study arc considerably. I also wanted to hear Archbishop Lefebvre in his own words. Reading the three-volume set Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre by Michael Davies was beneficial but not critical. Reading An Open Letter to Confused Catholics is an excellent place to begin, especially now, as it seems we are reliving the 1970s all over again both in the Church and in society. Another issue that arose was one of “supplied jurisdiction.” Reading the thin booklet by the same name laid out the case for and laid to rest concerns about jurisdiction.
Why did you settle on the SSPX as opposed to some other TLM community?
In this unprecedented time in Church history, it is more important than ever to be wise as serpents and gentle as doves. As a husband and father, I had to get ahead of the curve and find a spiritual refuge for my family, one where we wouldn’t be locked out and abandoned again like unwanted stepchildren from a Grimm’s fairy tales story. I also had to find us a home where lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi is taken seriously. It’s not just the liturgy with pretty things, or an appealing aesthetic. Beauty does matter, and assisting at a Mass where the architecture itself isn’t shouting you down with all its Bauhaus or Brutalist might is a huge win. The harmony of liturgy, theology, and aesthetics is not boutique Catholicism—it’s essential. If I went to a diocese TLM, the priests just don’t get the education that the Society priests do. And, in a show of wisdom, the assets of the Society are protected from hierarchical whims. Our chapels and priories will be there for us, our children, and our grandchildren.
What practices or devotions within Tradition have you found to be most fruitful for you?
I am a third order postulant with the Society which gives my daily prayer focus, when I am successful, and a measuring rod for when I am not. I’d always prayed the Rosary but now it’s the family rosary every day that I try to make sure happens. At times I pray the Rosary of the Seven Dolors, the seven sorrows our blessed Mother experienced as the Mother of God. We are still in the process of assimilating so much of our patrimony that was stolen from us. Have you seen the prayers in The Raccolta? That alone could fill every minute of every day and then some! Traditional life is as deep and rich as you want to go.
Now that you are a traditional Catholic, what are the greatest challenges that you face?
Coasting is always a danger; thinking you have “arrived” is always a temptation the Evil One uses to lure us to complacency. Pride is a challenge as well, as is dealing with the complicated fallout of having been abandoned by my archbishop and even the pope. It is then I remember that love is an act of the will, and that it is my duty to pray for them that they execute their office in such a way that they attain Heaven through God’s mercy and grace and that I must obey them in all things lawful. It is not an easy thing to maintain in these times.
Do you have any advice for the reader who may be considering, but not yet committed to, Tradition?
My advice to any Catholic who desires to experience his full patrimony on earth is to visit a Society chapel, attend a Mass or two, and speak with a priest of the Society. Do not be content with what detractors say, but let the Society speak for itself. And get to know Archbishop Lefebvre in his own words. Take advantage of the informative video series the Society has on YouTube—many questions are also answered there. We may feel orphaned by bishops and the Holy Father, but Our Lord did not leave us. He gave us His Mother and a Heaven full of good Popes and Bishops, priests, monks, nuns, and lay saints. We are not alone.
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