A quick thought I had about traditional Catholicism and our claims recalled to me what St. Paul said about Christians:

"For the word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God."
[1 Corinthians 1:18]

"That which I speak, I speak not according to God, but as it were in foolishness, in this matter of glorying."
[2 Corinthians 11:17]

We seem like fools going against the apparent Pope for the sake of truth. The world looks at the Novus Ordo and sees the Church, but then sees us as madmen and fools for saying it isn't so. We could easily betray the Truth and intermingle with the Novus Ordo, or leave the Church for Eastern Orthodoxy, but in both cases we are losing some innate truth of the Faith in favor of convenience.

As difficult as it is, I say we are all fools for Christ because we know that His Church cannot offer what comes out of Rome today. Rejoice in the Truth and in being seen as radicals and fools. 

As difficult as it is, I say we are all fools for Christ because we know that His Church cannot offer what comes out of Rome today. Rejoice in the Truth and in being seen as radicals and fools.

I sometimes think the #1 virtue, the sine qua non without which a modern day Catholic is lost, is the ability to spurn Human Respect.


Everything else comes from that.

Without the ability to reject or ignore Human Respect, you would be in the Novus Ordo, jabbed, using birth control, Woke, a slave to the Mainstream Media and the Bankers, and up to your neck in countless other evils and errors of the Modern World.

Basically if you can't be "weird" or "extremist" in the eyes of most, you're lost. Period. GIVEN THE STATE OF THE WORLD, you can't be a good-standing respecting member of said world.

OF COURSE the "ideal" is for the world to NOT be satanic OR insane, and to be a good "normie" respected member of that world, not drawing special attention to yourself. But we can't control how the World IS in reality. And so...

Imagine someone telling you that you needed to be a well-respected member of Sodom right before its punishment. Absurd! You'd better stand out like a sore thumb in a satanic society such as that. The same goes for our satanic Modern World -- the worst state Creation has been in, since right before the Flood!

I sometimes think the #1 virtue, the sine qua non without which a modern day Catholic is lost, is the ability to spurn Human Respect.


Everything else comes from that.

Without the ability to reject or ignore Human Respect, you would be in the Novus Ordo, jabbed, using birth control, Woke, a slave to the Mainstream Media and the Bankers, and up to your neck in countless other evils and errors of the Modern World.

Basically if you can't be "weird" or "extremist" in the eyes of most, you're lost. Period. GIVEN THE STATE OF THE WORLD, you can't be a good-standing respecting member of said world.

OF COURSE the "ideal" is for the world to NOT be satanic OR insane, and to be a good "normie" respected member of that world, not drawing special attention to yourself. But we can't control how the World IS in reality. And so...

Imagine someone telling you that you needed to be a well-respected member of Sodom right before its punishment. Absurd! You'd better stand out like a sore thumb in a satanic society such as that. The same goes for our satanic Modern World -- the worst state Creation has been in, since right before the Flood!

Agree in toto.

It is pretty much impossible now for any of us to go out into the world for employment and not draw down upon ourselves mockery, insults, false accusations. Fidelity to the moral law alone is enough to draw attention and get you ostracized.

If you cannot work, even for years, as a marginalized nonentity ... if you cannot withstand a literal years-long campaign against your reputation, respectability, and personal value, then forget about working altogether.

It's getting worse and worse and worse. 

Eastern Orthodoxy is the last place a traditional Catholic wants to be, quite aside from questions of losing one's salvation (extra ecclesiam nulla salus).  There could be exceptions among more tolerant individual Orthodox, but as a general rule, they have ZERO respect for Latin Rite Catholicism.  Even in those cases where they have a contrived "Western Rite" that is supposed to resemble the Tridentine liturgy (whether in Latin or in the vernacular), they still, for instance, insist that the round flat host that is used, starts out as leavened bread that has been pressed flat into a disk, they are all hung up on the "azyme" thing.  And they've got all this mumbo-jumbo about the Trinity having energies within It, or synergies, or whatever they call it.  For a faith that says you're just supposed to "behold the mystery" and not try to explain such things, they burn a lot of brain cells trying to do precisely that.

We like them a whole lot better than they like us.

They have generally treated the Latins worse than the Latins have them. Such schism, of course, breeds lack of charity. I mean indeed, the Latins have had their failings in regard to them such as the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and its fall due to lack of Western support in 1453. I mean if the Eastern Orthodox have not forgiven and gotten over these things, then just all the more would show lack of charity. 

It's ironic in what you say about their not attempting to explain and investigate things and just be in awe of the mystery if that is their tendency because the Eastern Fathers did try to explicate theology in regard to the mysteries of the faith as well as knew and applied Greek philosophy. 

Don't be fooled, the difference between us and the rest of the world is they willfully reject the graces that God would offer to them were He to see they would accept them.

Yes, that's the point. We look like fools, but they truly are the fools.

I agree 100%. This is exactly why most NO & protestants won't become Traditional Catholics. They love mother and father more than God. And we all know what Our Lord says about this. People are too afraid of going against the grain and looking like a crazy fool.

I've always been a rebel and now I get to be a rebel for God.

I'm also adopted, and never had any sort of deep familial ties/roots. So when the time came for me to take the jump it was nothing for me to do so. I used to be deeply troubled by not having anyone in my life that I could relate to and now this core wound is one of my greatest strengths. I now have a Father, a Mother, a Brother, and a whole host of siblings... The world has never and could never give me what I have always been searching for.

God has been good to me.

In our area at least, an old Southern city where people are predisposed not to stand out too loudly, not to discuss matters where there is a controversy or where human suffering or discord is involved --- "don't get your 'sad cooties' on me!", or as the lyrics to the song from the band REM over in Athens say, "shiny happy people" --- and, above all, to do the thing that everybody else is doing, we have many people who say they like the TLM, who speak highly of it, but when it comes actually to showing up... they're not there, they're at the Novus Ordo.  They're fickle and they mindlessly conform to the larger society.

For several reasons, including just the natural lack of attachment that occurs over time when people drift apart, I haven't been in contact with my extended family for decades, they're in states far away from me.  They are overwhelmingly non-Catholics, and I am quite confident that if we were in such contact, we would come to blows about matters of religion --- abortion, contraception, and divorce with invalid "remarriage" would be quite enough --- with the caveat that Protestants do not object to people worshiping in the way they see fit and that their conscience dictates.  It's only in the Catholic universe that "pray my way" comes to bear.

I sometimes think the #1 virtue, the sine qua non without which a modern day Catholic is lost, is the ability to spurn Human Respect.

Everything else comes from that.

Without the ability to reject or ignore Human Respect, you would be in the Novus Ordo, jabbed, using birth control, Woke, a slave to the Mainstream Media and the Bankers, and up to your neck in countless other evils and errors of the Modern World.

Basically if you can't be "weird" or "extremist" in the eyes of most, you're lost. Period. GIVEN THE STATE OF THE WORLD, you can't be a good-standing respecting member of said world.

The first and second sentences help a lot in figuring out how to deal with people I know who've become "Cath-curious" in a way that doesn't necessarily mean that they intend to commit at all. With the next two paragraphs, though, some of these people have always held themselves out to be different for the sake of being different. Still, it's a subset of that same craving for human respect but within a godless against-the-stream mentality. Gnostic, I guess. They assume I've clued into some new alternative they didn't manage to try yet.

When they ask, I direct them to various things to read or videos to watch, always traditional clergy and never lay sources. So far there's no feedback at all from them that suggests any of it has begun to sink in. They sometimes ask my opinion, and I answer along the lines of "I'm not a catechist" or, in a weary but cheery moment, "It's a trad thing, you wouldn't understand". They sometimes ask to come along to Mass (for example on Ash Wednesday), and I tell them that it's a serious thing and not some sort of performance for them to gawk at, or vague spiritual vibe to experience, or some latest way to be edgy and offbeat. 

For a while it troubled me that I might be discouraging a soul from conversion, but then I remember that it's not on me to convert anyone who doesn't really want it. So I pray for them at the end of each Rosary decade, and I leave the rest to Divine Providence. 

Back to that Human Respect thing. I guess a new grace lately is that the worldly hardly matters to me anymore. For that solace, I am very thankful to Our Lord. 

YES!!! from spiritual-but-not-religious types too. It doesn't register that it's not about what "works for you". It's too unsettling to consider that it's only about One True Way, and all the rest is NOT that one true way. 

As Pope Leo XIII said Indifferentism is the same as Atheism. What's been most enlightening with my conversion to Catholicism is that protestants, et. al, have no idea that Truth is objective and not dictated by their subjective feelings about what is right or wrong. They ignore what their Voice of Conscience tells them in favor of convenience and culpability for sin. They don't want to offend anyone by asserting that their are rules God has set down for us both in Word and that is naturally written in our hearts.

To be fair, habits do become deeply ingrained and I'm far from perfect(Lord knows). But so many people disobey THEMSELVES and then blame others for their misfortune. They know the Truth is out there and are too afraid of seeing their defects come to light; of learning how sinful they really are. It's pride. A lack of humility.

I've heard from protestant family members that for their sins "God will understand." And I usually don't respond for the sake of arguing with them, but I just want to tell them that yes He does! In fact He understands us very well. Not just because of his Omnipotence but also because He lived as a man and experienced everything that we do to the fullest degree. BUT that does not excuse us from NOT changing our ways, especially when we know better! Both with Divine Law and the Natural Law. The cognitive dissonance with most people is incredible. They really are living in a fantasy. But to be all in and acknowledge the supernatural realities of life are so far outside their realm of comprehension that they see Traditional Catholics as the most foolish of all.