Were you born into the world of Traditional Catholicism? If not, how did you discover tradition?
No I was not born into it. Around the time I was in high school, I began to become interested in NO church and joined the youth group. Around that same time, my maternal Grandfather began telling our family about a mass done at a local hospital (Indult) which was in Latin. I, sadly, had absolutely no interest.
Though I'd be brought up to have reverence for tradition and disdain for 'changes'(1) we'd seen in our Novus Ordo days, by that time I'd been apart of this youth group for about a year and we had even visited the local protestant worship service to hear one of our friends play drums at. So while parts of me were Catholic, other parts of me were not(wow- it is difficult to see/write those words). My parents were also not attending mass regularly at that point. It took about a year for them to finally take my grandfather up, who had discovered the SSPX by that point, and attend mass in at the Colton, California chapel; they were immediately hooked.
They had told me to go and visit, so my best friend, who is now traditional, and a girl I knew visited a local Indult. That was my first Tridentine mass. It was an awkward experience. Probably 90% of the attendees were over the age of 60, as was the priest. But I knew that everything I saw was good; no Eucharistic ministers, no communion in the hand, no layman giving homilies, etc. So I knew there was something good there. When I attended the SSPX mass the next week, I could 'tell' that there was also something different- even more so than what I experienced at the indult (yes, it was a 'feeling', but it wasn't sentimental, I'm confident it was the Holy Ghost).
And that was pretty much it. The girl I took was interested in the mass at first, but her mother would have no part of it. Her mother actually sent her to Stubenville for school to get her away from me, and she married out there. My best friend, a young eccentric Filipino, had a hard time with his mother as well. After a few periods of him not going to TLM with us, as I always offered to pick him up to go, he finally told his mom that he didn't want to go to the NO. He was actually in the CMRI seminary for a time, but is now out studying philosophy at a pontifical university (I know I know, I tried to convince him otherwise); but he is an ardent traditionalist and (not that it matters, but just so you know) a sedevecantist. We remain best friends to today.
That's it! I hope I didn't bore you.
(1)My family, even during our Novus Ordo days, would drive past the closer St. Paul the Apostle Catholic
Community to another city to go to mass (I suppose that made the drive to a SSPX mass not so shocking lol) and once, my father stood up and made a loud comment at a mass we were at when the liturgical dancers came out; he almost yelled, "What are you doing?! What are you doing?!", then stormed out; a few families also left. I was also instructed to receive my first holy communion in the mouth, which my mother had to put up quite a fight for.
Topic: Questions for s2srea (Read 1349 times)