When I converted to Catholicism in 1977, one thing that attracted me was the sense of history, of connection to the ages, of doing what the faithful had been doing for centuries; and it seemed to me that nearly everyone else in the Church was rushing headlong the other way, scattering vestments, monstrances, hymnals and prayer books behind them as they went in desperate quest of ugly burlap banners, copies of Kumbaya, and the trendiest heresies. The Diocese of Charlotte’s education office even sent out tape sets that explicitly contradicted the Council of Trent! It was easy to think, in those days of swimming against the current and trying to preserve a few of the beauties of worship and art which were despised or ignored because they were old, and the inerrant, though vague, “spirit of Vatican II” mandated that we throw out everything old, no matter how uplifting, and embrace everything new, like clown masses, that the Church had lost her way, or been hijacked by modernists, as the council had allegedly been.
In this frame of mind, attending a week-long Ignatan retreat hosted by the SSPX in Ridgefield in 1980 was like a revelation. I had never in my life attended a Tridentine Mass, and the one that ended the retreat is still one of the most profounly moving liturgies I have ever attended. I was hooked. Here, it seemed, was the Church of the Ages I had sought in my home parish, only to find wishy-washy priests and the rather flat, everyday prose of the Novus Ordo.
However, none of the trappings, the Latin and Gregorian Chant and wonderfully contemplative liturgy, could mask forever the basic contradiction that you can’t have traditional Catholicism in opposition to the Pope and virtually the whole Church. Plus I noted disturbing trends of paranoia and anti-semitism in the Society, and eventually even reading many defenses and meeting Archbishop Lefebvre himself, I couldn’t stay. But returning to Catholicism, in full communion with the Pope and the bishops, has been a long, circuitous route, with many bizarre twists and turns irrelevant here. Reading a book called The Pope, the Council, and the Mass,
Very good post. Your experience closely parallels my own. After the post VII abuses became intolerable, we began attending an SSPX chapel. There we found the reverence and fervency that had seemingly departed from the NO Church. Excellent priests and committed,devout faithful. What could be wrong? For five years we traveled long distances and sacrificed a parish life in order to practice a truer version of the ancient faith. But as time went by, with no moves by either the Vatican or SSPX to resolve their differences, we realized that if one was not in union with the Pope and the Magisterium, one could not truly call one’sself “Catholic.” So we returned to our NO parish, with great misgivings, in the hope that the destruction would be halted and the faith restored. We have great hopes that the Vatican and the SSPX will finally reconcile and that the Church will finally make use of the great gifts possessed by the SSPX.
) for your honesty and sharing your experience. I too hope for unity in the church.