You know you're a Traditional Catholic when

  • Thread starter Thread starter JuanCarlos
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
You may never have grandchildren because both of your sons are considering the religious life - and you are happy about it. 🙂

You are like a kid in a candy store when an Ignatius Press or Angelus Press catalog comes in the mail.

You spend your lunch hour perusing religious goods catalogs to pick out statues and religious art.
 
But most EVERYTHING a Catholic can do to publicly express their faith - be it wearing a crucifix, making the sign of the cross in public, refusing to eat meat on Good Friday, or even attending Mass at a Catholic Church - is distracting to someone who is determined to dislike the Catholic faith in its various manifestations, and all of it potentially leads that someone away from Christ. If it had been someone that I know doesn’t like Catholicism, I probably would have kept wearing it. But it was actually Catholics during Mass. Also, I sing in the choir, so I’m up in front of people wearing it, not just in the pews.

If someone told you that the mere fact of their knowing that you go to Mass distracts them from their faith, would you stop? Of course not. Neither should you let the fact that some have expressed disapproval of your covering your head stop you from doing it if you sincerely feel called to do so. Wearing a veil wasn’t something I grew up with and so, I think, didn’t have quite the same meaning for me as it does for some.

As Paul said, ‘we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews …’. He didn’t stop preaching because of that fact, though, did he?
Sorry for kinda getting away from the main topic. :o

You know you’re a Trad. when you have extremely strong opinions on everything spiritual. 😃
 
You are like a kid in a candy store when an Ignatius Press or Angelus Press catalog comes in the mail.

You spend your lunch hour perusing religious goods catalogs to pick out statues and religious art.
Yup! Sounds like me! 😛
 
I have read a number of the posts, but not all, so please forgive me if these have been said already:

-When your mind always says “Good morning, sister” after saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

-When you burn a bit of Palm Sunday palm when there are storm warnings.

-When you have a drawer full of holy cards, acquired over the years, and can’t bear the thought of disposing of any of them.

-When half of your holy cards were acquired by your ancestors, who couldn’t part with them either and you fell heir to them and actually wanted them.

-When you sometimes go through your holy cards and it somehow brings a sense of peace into your heart.

-When you carry a rosary in the car, and say it whenever the trip is 15 minutes or longer.

-When you always start thinking the Latin version of the Our Father and the Credo at Mass when they start, even though they’re in English.

-When you’re Irish and the traditional Christmas Eve dinner is fish and scallop soup, and you don’t eat anything after 8:00 p.m. because you’re going to Midnight Mass.

-When you’re German and you wear blue on St. Joseph’s day.

-When you wear your ashes on Ash Wednesday and people tell you there’s dirt on your forehead and you say “no, it’s for Ash Wednesday” and they have definitely heard of Ash Wednesday but had no idea there was any kind of ash involvment connected with it, and their mouths just drop when you explain what Ash Wednesday actually is.

-When, on Memorial Day, you bring flowers to those few, very old graves that bear names like “Baby Riley” or “Infant Nowak”, and say a prayer or two over them, and you explain to your children or grandchildren who they are and why you’re doing it, and then every year they want to do it and it becomes one more tradition.

-When you’re with your kids or grandkids doing some kind of work and take a break to pray with them and they don’t think it’s strange at all, because they expect such things of you. Berry picking in the summer is the very best time, for some reason. Another addition to tradition.

-When you take one or more of your kids or grandkids to Mass and, afterward, go with them to light vigil lights for their intentions and the girls light the blue ones on the “Mary” side and the boys light the red ones on the “St. Joseph” side, and nobody thinks it’s somehow not right to do it.

-When you give your son or daughter your First Communion prayer book and he/she actually wants it.

-When your kid or grandkid who plays football for a public school makes the Sign of the Cross before every play.

-When you pray to St. Anthony when you have lost something, and for some reason one of your kids or grandkids’ prayers seem particularly efficacious and everybody calls him or her up to pray when something’s lost, and it always seems to work almost instantly, and you’ve developed yet one more tradition.

-When you pray to St. Joseph for patience and understanding if your wife is angry with you.

-When you make the Sign of the Cross every time you pass a Catholic Church, no matter who’s in the car with you.
 
  • All your family and your wife´s family thinks you´re mad.
  • You go on a pilgrimage and agree to pray the Rosary with your catholic friends, and have to explain to why you want to pray the Joyous Mysteries on a Thursday.
  • Your entire week is spent looking forward to the only EF Mass available in your diocese, and you wouldn´t miss it for anything this side of Heaven.
  • You carry around so many holy cards in your wallet that it´s almost impossible to find anybody´s buisiness card in less than 10 minutes.
  • You feel rotten about having to take your scapular off when you go to the swimming pool with your kids, wondering what would happen to you if you bumped your head against the side of the pool and died in the hour you´re not wearing it.
  • Three kids feels like far too few, and you can´t wait for your wife to tell you that she´s pregnant again.
  • The only web sites you visit daily are all catholic.
  • You know how in every detail the mortifications of San Peter Alcantara.
  • You think the The True Devotion to Mary by Louis-Mary Grignon de Montfort is one of the best books ever.
  • You sometimes wish you had been born 100 years earlier.
 
Sorry, I forgot a few!
  • You wonder about what name you´d choose if you were elected Pope, which of course is extremely unlikely… 😛 BTW, it would be Pius XIII.
  • You cross yourself when you walk or drive past a church or a cemetery.
  • You´ve read Archbishop Lefebvre´s “Open letter to Confused Catholics” at least five times.
  • You have a bottle labelled “holy water” in your sock draw.
 
You know you’re a Traditional Catholic when you become depressed at the fact that most things listed under the heading “things that only traditionalist Catholics do” are just common-sense notions that every Catholic should believe and do but don’t anymore because the Church is in a profound crisis and all real faith is ghettoised as ‘traditional’ and no one can be bothered to do anything with beauty and profound depth because we’re all too busy eating meat on Fridays and watching lewd comedies and saying ‘bugger all’ to holy morality and love and truth and justice.

:mad:
 
haha, great story!!!

You know you’re a traditional Catholic when you walk into a Protestant church and a few minutes later you panic because you realise you don’t have a veil on! Happens to me all the time.
 
You are really traditional if you want to Mass to be said not in Latin, Greek, or the vernacular, but in Aramaic, the probable everyday language of Jesus.
 
You say “St. Augustine Taught” and everyone walks away.
  • Your non-Catholic family can be talking about “religion” (or horoscopes…) at the dinner table, and upon opening your mouth, and before even uttering a single word, the next thing you know, you’re eating alone. :rolleyes:
I do that a lot, and I’m a recent convert!
… you build your own kneeler for your bedroom.
May have to resort to that! :rotfl: My birthday’s coming up, and my parents said, “No kneelers!”.
 
I loved this post! I’m not “officially” Catholic yet, so I’ll answer this from the perspective of my sponsors, who are very traditional.

-You live 5 minutes away from your home parish but sometimes drive 40 minutes away to celebrate the EF
-You’re the only woman with a mantilla (when attending your parish, of course)
-You don’t have a TV in your house, but you have bookshelves (plural) filled with encyclicals, Summae Theologicae, several different Bibles, and the like
-Your home has not one but two kneelers, with Rosary beads and missals adorning both
-You get suspicious looks when you genuflect before receiving the Body of Christ
-You get even more suspicious looks when you receive on the tongue :eek:
-You are the one of the only ones (including the deacons) who actually make a profound bow during the Creed
-You are one of the only ones who faces the altar and genuflects at the font (coming and going)
 
I loved this post! I’m not “officially” Catholic yet, so I’ll answer this from the perspective of my sponsors, who are very traditional.

-You live 5 minutes away from your home parish but sometimes drive 40 minutes away to celebrate the EF
-You don’t have a TV in your house, but you have bookshelves (plural) filled with encyclicals, Summae Theologicae, several different Bibles, and the like
Yes of course, no TV! 😃 Absolutely splendid! 😃
 
What? No EWTN?
I don’t have a TV either, so I watch EWTN online. So there’s just another reason I don’t need to get one 🙂

Clarification: I do have an actual TV, and we used to have digital cable and lots of channels but about a year and a half ago decided that it was just another montly bill, not to mention an occasion of sin (and laziness!). So we got rid of all the channels and now use it as a huge computer monitor 😃
 
I don’t have a TV either, so I watch EWTN online. So there’s just another reason I don’t need to get one 🙂

Clarification: I do have an actual TV, and we used to have digital cable and lots of channels but about a year and a half ago decided that it was just another montly bill, not to mention an occasion of sin (and laziness!). So we got rid of all the channels and now use it as a huge computer monitor 😃
So now you have ceased to be a couch-potato and are instead strapped to the computer-chair? Sorry, I could not resist!
 
Whenever you take as much criticism from fellow Catholics as the church gets from evangelicals/fundamentalists.😉
 
Whenever you kneel down before the majesty of Christ at holy communion and you hear the tut-tuts from behind.:mad:
 
So now you have ceased to be a couch-potato and are instead strapped to the computer-chair? Sorry, I could not resist!
Ironic, coming from someone with over 1,500 posts on these forums, compared to my 130. Sorry, I could not resist!
 
When you say “Dogma says…”

And you hear “…That’s your interpretation.” As if Dogmas were subject to interpretation! 😉
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top