I started a paid subscription to Matt Fradd’s Locals community just to get early access to this interview, thinking I’d find salient parts to link beloved “normie” Catholic friends to, not realizing that of course Dr. K would do the better part of that work for me, with citations!
Here’s what I commented on Locals on first watch:
🥹 This was SO GOOD. I can't begin to express how elated I am to see traditional Catholicism spotlighted like this for "normie" Catholics. And you simply couldn't pick a more eloquent, learned, and loving representative of tradition than Dr. K.
My only concern is that, at nearly four hours, it's probably every bit as hard to bite off and chew as it is for my dear friends raised in the Modern Rite to drive into the city for the Traditional Latin Mass for three months! Still, I can't imagine doing justice to Dr. K's massive corpus of work, let alone showcasing how truly filled with charity he is, by reducing this to soundbites. Hopefully I can pick out some specific clips to share, and when it hits YouTube, use links to those clips to hook friends into watching more.
Thank you, @Matt_Fradd and team, for bringing Dr. Kwasniewski to your audience!
I think the advantage to a podcast, however long, is that it's "easy to consume" as compared with a 200- or 300-page book. Think of how many folks listen to Joe Rogan, who goes on for hours...
So, it will have an effect, and I'm pretty sure that effect will be overwhelmingly positive in the long run. To God be all the glory!
Yea man. I consider myself traditional, my parish does mass as orientun. I went to a latin mass and didn't really get it, but you're giving really good replies to objections I've held for a while. I'll read your book when I have time.
Yes, please read "Turned Around" - I think it has the potential to turn upside-down a lot of what Catholics have been taught to accept as normal. In favor of the "common mind of the Church" that reigned for so many centuries.
Watched this right through. To be honest I never expected an interview like this to happen and I applaud Matt Fradd for his latitude on bringing new voices to his show, which I think had been skewed for many years in favour towards guests who were less critical of the crises in the Church, or indeed downright hostile to tradition, or dissenting commentators of the dictatorship.
Glad to hear Dr Kwasniewski mention Michael Davies and would have loved to have seen a conversation develop on his work and the contribution Archbishop Lefebvre made to keeping the faith alive. Although not explicitly named, the notion of Lex Orandi Lex Credendi, was at the forefront of the resistance's mind, alongside Archbishop Lefebvre's future epitaph: Tradidi quod et accepi.
I felt very fortunate to have Dr Kwasniewski represent the recusant in such a well informed and erudite manner, and in doing so I expect he might just have changed the minds of more than a few more charitable viewers who might have well been brainwashed by the establishment over the years.
I'm not sure how these interviews are negotiated prior to the event, and perhaps some agreements were made to steer away from more polarising topics such as Rupnik, Homosexual blessings etc etc, but still I'm overwhelming pleased that traditional voices are being welcomed into mainstream conversation. Thanks to both.
Thank you, Stephen. To be quite honest, Matt asked very little of me before the interview. He verified that I was not a sedevacantist and that I did not deny the validity of the new Mass or the Second Vatican Council. All this was easy for me, as I have never had any difficulty admitting those points (as limited as they are). For the rest, the conversation simply unfolded organically. There's so much more we could have talked about, including Lefebre (I had occasion to mention the SSPX only once, alas), but we already covered a lot of territory, and this will be very helpful for the conservatives who have never heard the traditionalist case presented to them.
Yes, I agree that this will be an opportunity for a wider audience to explore the traditional Catholic viewpoint, and see that we are more than reasonable and fully orthodox. As mentioned on the show, it's an unfortunate reality that on the one hand we have a particularly irrational section of sedevacantism and a loud and ignorant fringe of the traditional movement who adopt a schismatic mindset, who seem to be identified by novus ordo Catholics as "trads" one and all. In this day and age there really no way to avoid this, especially when you have bad actors who hate tradition, and would happily make use of a few village idiots to slander us all.
Anyway, I pray this is perhaps a watershed moment, and who knows, we might see other good people invited onto these platforms.
Dr. Kwasniewski- this was a fantastic discussion which perfectly combined erudition and engagement; it certainly didn't "feel" like almost four hours, and as it was concluding my wife and I found ourselves wishing it would continue and hoping for another interview in the same venue. I hope Matt and you are able to do this again in the future.
I thought Matt did a excellent job of presenting questions, objections, etc., which I think were fair to them as they are often presented as objections and allowed for engagement with the underlying ideas behind them. I also appreciated how he framed much of it within his own experience so that it was not merely an abstract discussion but something that has real-life effects and often creates difficult decisions for everyone, but especially for those with families who wish their families and children to not become statistics. Your responses and the general "vibe" I thought presented the TLM and tradition in general in very winsome light while not shying away from the challenges and realities on the ground, all of which were wrapped up in charity.
I also appreciate you taking the time to put together this list of resources as well as clearing up things that in the midst of a wide-ranging interview are inevitable, and that is one of the reasons I very much enjoy your writing and speaking, as you are exceptionally judicious with your language but also demonstrate remarkable humility. When you accidentally said Pius XI rather than Pius XII, I joked to my wife that you would probably mention it in a follow-up, and sure enough!
I wasn't expecting the "obedience" portion to come up, but I think you excellently distilled the dilemma that is faced within the modern context. I think that was an extremely valuable portion and if you ever do another interview with Matt I think that would something worth delving into more deeply. Granted, I know you've written a book on it, but something about "hearing" it presented in the way that you did so--even briefly--has a way of setting it in more concrete terms.
Great interview, great discussion. Thanks, Dr. Kwasniewski, for sharing your always valuable thoughts, and thanks to Matt Fradd for hosting this and for doing a great job as interlocutor.
Related to the YouTube video: though not numerous, I noticed a couple of posts in the comments section that suggested Dr. Brant Pitre's treatment of liturgical history (which you and Gregory DiPippo previously critiqued) as a possible counter to yours.
It makes sense that some Pints with Aquinas viewers would also be consumers of Dr. Pitre's materials, though I wonder if they're aware that a.) you've engaged critically with his presentation, and b.) Dr. Pitre has thus far declined to respond to those public critiques.
I was thrilled when I first heard this episode was imminent. In the past, the Pints with Aquinas guest list has been conspicuously uneven on the subject of traditionalism, so I was super excited when I learned Matt Fradd had interviewed you.
That I enjoyed the episode was expected; what I was especially curious about, however, was seeing the wider audience response. I was heartened to find goodwill recognizing goodwill, on the whole, and that so many viewers found the discussion fruitful. I'm praying this interview creates (or at least indicates) a healthy and necessary shift in the Overton window of the Catholic world, allowing devout and pious Catholics of different stripes to discuss the liturgy with greater charity and openness.
Dr K, there's no doubt that you have remain consistent,in humbly delivery of the Catholic faith in it tradition and purity,may God continue to bless you!
Mindblown. Ive been a TLM loving Novus Ordo attender, but a pretty ignorant one. Many things I had no idea. My only real substantial objection was I felt the new Lectionary was definitely and objectively an improvement, but Dr K shattered that for me. I will be going FSSP after this, but I do have and have had a concern that they are forcing us into ghettos away from our local parishes and consequently parishioners. For this reason, I feel obligated to keep a full foot hold in my local parish as well.
I agree about the importance of parishes. This was the genius of Summorum Pontificum, that it brought the positive presence and influence of the TLM right home to the parish. But Pope Francis destroyed that, and Leo has not yet seen fit to reverse TC (though it will have to reversed eventually).
I understand if you don't see eye to eye with me on this point but I have reached the conclusion that the wisdom and power of tradition, its capacity to shape our interior life and our family life, is so important that it outweighs even the local parish community. And I think the number of people who attend the FSSP chapels (and others like them) end up finding a new and often better community there.
You mentioned Ratzinger’s Theology of the Liturgy around 53:00-54:00. I recommend postings link to that book.
I found this long quote on YouTube feed :
J. Ratzinger on the Protestant influence on the Liturgical Movement after Vatican Il and the Way Forward:
It seems to me that as early as the 1950s, and certainly after the Council, the latent and, likewise, the patent risks in the Liturgical Movement constituted a great temptation, a serious danger for the Church.
After the Council there was a new situation, because the liturgists had acquired a de facto authority: the authority of the Church was being recognized less and less, and now the expert became the authority.
This transfer of authority to the experts transformed everything, and these experts in turn were the victims of an exegesis profoundly influenced by the opinions of Protestantism, that is to say, that the New Testament was against the category of sacredness, against cult and priesthood, and thus at the opposite pole to the great tradition, above all that of the Council of Trent.
Thus, we have to be aware that with a secularized exegesis, and with a hermeneutic system that is profoundly Protestant and secularized, we can not find the basis of our faith in the New Testament; and that with the fragmentation of the liturgy, when it is considered as being the particular action of the local congregation, then we lose sight of the Church and, along with the Church, of faith and mystery. What we need, in contrast to this, is to return to an exegesis rooted in the living reality of the Church, the Church of all ages -especially the Church of the Fathers -but of the Church of truly all the ages: even the Church of the Middle Ages.
We need also, therefore, to rediscover cultic reality and the sacral priesthood in the New Testament and to win back the essentials for the liturgy; in that sense, I wanted to say that, within the limitations that are certainly to be found in the documents of Trent, Trent remains the norm, as reread with our greater knowledae and deeper understandina of the Fathers and of the New Testament, as read with the Fathers and with the Church of all ages.
Theology of The Liturgy (Joseph Ratzinger Collected Works Vol 11), Ignatius Press, 2014, pgs 561-562.
I was heartened by your love for Card. Ratzinger, but now, seeing his grief over the liturgical changes, I'm quite perplexed. Did he imagine a well-catechised laity would grieve but persevere, counting on the underlying [camouflaged] theology of the Mass to carry them through the coming centuries? Yes, he wrote Summorum Pontificum, but did he really think that was enough? I admit to being baffled that someone with such authority would grieve, shrug, and hope for the best (while knowing that the laity was actually not well-catechised at all).
It's like a train wreck that not only caused destruction because of the initial event, but the cargo is leaking all sorts of toxins into the water table, the passengers still trapped inside, and the engineers sending other trains along the same line, hoping for a better outcome.
Honestly, I keep thinking that I've missed something--this is entirely untenable.
I was born and raised Catholic. Went to Benedictine College and was ingrained in the liturgical practices of the Benedictines. I was very close to my faith during that period. But over the past 20 years, it slipped, and during COVID, stepped away for a couple of years. As I found my way back, I found my faith deepening.
A lot of my reading and prayer has been centered on the ancient church and the Saints and Mystics of the church. And through that began to notice the gaps in the liturgical practices.
A friend began inviting me to his Eastern Orthodox church, and the beauty and mystery of the liturgy were overwhelming. I've been going more regularly and have been contemplating and inquiring about a conversion.
While there is a church that does a Latin mass, it is outside of the normal flow of masses and therefore outside of the calendar of community gatherings (which would impact my kids and their ability to participate in Sunday School and sacramental prep). There is a Byzantine Church, but it is an hour away... and similarly, we wouldn't be part of that community.
Praying, trying to listen to my heart, and trying to listen to God.
It is so tragic that Catholics in the West have a tradition as rich as the Orthodox, but it is so often hidden from them or even taken away by the modernists (and their useful idiots) in our midst. As one who loves the Byzantine liturgy, I appreciate very much your perspective. On the other hand, as beautiful as the Orthodox liturgy is, their ecclesiology is a mess (and has been for a long, long time), their moral theology is incoherent, and there is a general lack of clarity about what they believe and do not believe, which I think no amount of mysticism and incense can overcome. In reality, what we need is our Western tradition, rich and strong, whether Byzantine Catholic or Tridentine Catholic. I regret that you live so far away from a good community of that kind.
I really appreciate your response and the articles you shared. They gave me a lot to think about, especially the way they both acknowledge the beauty and depth of the Western tradition while also being honest about the crisis we’re living through right now.
I don’t want to romanticize either side. Being part of the Western tradition, I’ve been seeing a lot of the problems up close.
When I’ve debated with Orthodox friends, I sometimes find myself saying, “Yes, Catholicism teaches that too, but you don’t hear it taught that way very often.”
Take confession. The Catechism calls it both a sacrament of healing and a judicial act. But what I’ve usually experienced is priests leaning heavily on the courtroom side. The healing, medicinal side often gets downplayed, and within the Catholic tradition, I have found myself having to figure out the healing part by myself.
The same is true with how salvation and our relationship with God are presented. Catholicism teaches divinization, but in many parishes it gets reduced to “stay in a state of grace so you can go to heaven.” At my Catholic parish, during a Sunday School parent meeting, the leader told us, “God isn’t within us when we aren’t in a state of grace.” Yes, that reflects a real point of Catholic doctrine, but it’s incomplete. Our sin blinds us, like looking through a dirty window (to use a metaphor from Sts John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila), but the light is still shining. That tension—between what the Church actually teaches and how it gets oversimplified or distorted at the parish level—has been hard to live with.
And it frames how people think about the afterlife. It can sound like a retirement plan: “I did all the right things, I stayed out of mortal sin, now I get the reward.” Instead of seeing that the opportunity to leave and breath every moment to draw closure to God.
I had a prayer life—daily Rosary, Jesus Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours—prior to this inquiry. It wasn’t until I started using an Orthodox prayer book, praying the same prayers morning and night, that I began feeling the effects of prayer. Over the past several weeks, I have experienced the truest sense of repentance I have ever felt as a result of these prayers.
With this inquiry, I am wrestling with what it means to “pick up the cross.” Is the cross for me to stay rooted in the Catholic Church, holding to tradition in my own home and practice, even if it feels like I’m carrying it alone at times? Or is the cross to detach from the modernity in Catholic life into a more traditional approach that is accessible and takes on the weight of conversion? Both paths feel heavy, and neither one is just about me. I have three kids. My wife. My household as a whole to consider this.
That’s where I’m at right now: praying, listening, trying to discern what Christ is asking.
Yes. This is a matter for deep discernment, and for patience, and not for haste.
The Orthodox have preserved much that the West has lost. Part of the reason they have preserved it is that they have no leader among them who could disturb the equilibrium. This is beautiful in its own way, but also partly explains why they have been so poor at missionary work and addressing modern challenges: when you have no leader, you have no possibility of growth, with the good and bad challenges that implies.
What you say about the cross in both scenarios resonates loudly with me.
I started a paid subscription to Matt Fradd’s Locals community just to get early access to this interview, thinking I’d find salient parts to link beloved “normie” Catholic friends to, not realizing that of course Dr. K would do the better part of that work for me, with citations!
Here’s what I commented on Locals on first watch:
🥹 This was SO GOOD. I can't begin to express how elated I am to see traditional Catholicism spotlighted like this for "normie" Catholics. And you simply couldn't pick a more eloquent, learned, and loving representative of tradition than Dr. K.
My only concern is that, at nearly four hours, it's probably every bit as hard to bite off and chew as it is for my dear friends raised in the Modern Rite to drive into the city for the Traditional Latin Mass for three months! Still, I can't imagine doing justice to Dr. K's massive corpus of work, let alone showcasing how truly filled with charity he is, by reducing this to soundbites. Hopefully I can pick out some specific clips to share, and when it hits YouTube, use links to those clips to hook friends into watching more.
Thank you, @Matt_Fradd and team, for bringing Dr. Kwasniewski to your audience!
Thanks for your kind words, Clayton!
I think the advantage to a podcast, however long, is that it's "easy to consume" as compared with a 200- or 300-page book. Think of how many folks listen to Joe Rogan, who goes on for hours...
So, it will have an effect, and I'm pretty sure that effect will be overwhelmingly positive in the long run. To God be all the glory!
Yea man. I consider myself traditional, my parish does mass as orientun. I went to a latin mass and didn't really get it, but you're giving really good replies to objections I've held for a while. I'll read your book when I have time.
Yes, please read "Turned Around" - I think it has the potential to turn upside-down a lot of what Catholics have been taught to accept as normal. In favor of the "common mind of the Church" that reigned for so many centuries.
Watched this right through. To be honest I never expected an interview like this to happen and I applaud Matt Fradd for his latitude on bringing new voices to his show, which I think had been skewed for many years in favour towards guests who were less critical of the crises in the Church, or indeed downright hostile to tradition, or dissenting commentators of the dictatorship.
Glad to hear Dr Kwasniewski mention Michael Davies and would have loved to have seen a conversation develop on his work and the contribution Archbishop Lefebvre made to keeping the faith alive. Although not explicitly named, the notion of Lex Orandi Lex Credendi, was at the forefront of the resistance's mind, alongside Archbishop Lefebvre's future epitaph: Tradidi quod et accepi.
I felt very fortunate to have Dr Kwasniewski represent the recusant in such a well informed and erudite manner, and in doing so I expect he might just have changed the minds of more than a few more charitable viewers who might have well been brainwashed by the establishment over the years.
I'm not sure how these interviews are negotiated prior to the event, and perhaps some agreements were made to steer away from more polarising topics such as Rupnik, Homosexual blessings etc etc, but still I'm overwhelming pleased that traditional voices are being welcomed into mainstream conversation. Thanks to both.
Thank you, Stephen. To be quite honest, Matt asked very little of me before the interview. He verified that I was not a sedevacantist and that I did not deny the validity of the new Mass or the Second Vatican Council. All this was easy for me, as I have never had any difficulty admitting those points (as limited as they are). For the rest, the conversation simply unfolded organically. There's so much more we could have talked about, including Lefebre (I had occasion to mention the SSPX only once, alas), but we already covered a lot of territory, and this will be very helpful for the conservatives who have never heard the traditionalist case presented to them.
Yes, I agree that this will be an opportunity for a wider audience to explore the traditional Catholic viewpoint, and see that we are more than reasonable and fully orthodox. As mentioned on the show, it's an unfortunate reality that on the one hand we have a particularly irrational section of sedevacantism and a loud and ignorant fringe of the traditional movement who adopt a schismatic mindset, who seem to be identified by novus ordo Catholics as "trads" one and all. In this day and age there really no way to avoid this, especially when you have bad actors who hate tradition, and would happily make use of a few village idiots to slander us all.
Anyway, I pray this is perhaps a watershed moment, and who knows, we might see other good people invited onto these platforms.
Dr. Kwasniewski- this was a fantastic discussion which perfectly combined erudition and engagement; it certainly didn't "feel" like almost four hours, and as it was concluding my wife and I found ourselves wishing it would continue and hoping for another interview in the same venue. I hope Matt and you are able to do this again in the future.
I thought Matt did a excellent job of presenting questions, objections, etc., which I think were fair to them as they are often presented as objections and allowed for engagement with the underlying ideas behind them. I also appreciated how he framed much of it within his own experience so that it was not merely an abstract discussion but something that has real-life effects and often creates difficult decisions for everyone, but especially for those with families who wish their families and children to not become statistics. Your responses and the general "vibe" I thought presented the TLM and tradition in general in very winsome light while not shying away from the challenges and realities on the ground, all of which were wrapped up in charity.
I also appreciate you taking the time to put together this list of resources as well as clearing up things that in the midst of a wide-ranging interview are inevitable, and that is one of the reasons I very much enjoy your writing and speaking, as you are exceptionally judicious with your language but also demonstrate remarkable humility. When you accidentally said Pius XI rather than Pius XII, I joked to my wife that you would probably mention it in a follow-up, and sure enough!
I wasn't expecting the "obedience" portion to come up, but I think you excellently distilled the dilemma that is faced within the modern context. I think that was an extremely valuable portion and if you ever do another interview with Matt I think that would something worth delving into more deeply. Granted, I know you've written a book on it, but something about "hearing" it presented in the way that you did so--even briefly--has a way of setting it in more concrete terms.
Great interview, great discussion. Thanks, Dr. Kwasniewski, for sharing your always valuable thoughts, and thanks to Matt Fradd for hosting this and for doing a great job as interlocutor.
Thank you very much for your kind words!
To God be the glory. May this podcast benefit many souls.
Related to the YouTube video: though not numerous, I noticed a couple of posts in the comments section that suggested Dr. Brant Pitre's treatment of liturgical history (which you and Gregory DiPippo previously critiqued) as a possible counter to yours.
It makes sense that some Pints with Aquinas viewers would also be consumers of Dr. Pitre's materials, though I wonder if they're aware that a.) you've engaged critically with his presentation, and b.) Dr. Pitre has thus far declined to respond to those public critiques.
If you happen to see anyone bring in Brant Pitre on the Mass, please leave this link in reply:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqwh5NKyXls
Thank you!
I was thrilled when I first heard this episode was imminent. In the past, the Pints with Aquinas guest list has been conspicuously uneven on the subject of traditionalism, so I was super excited when I learned Matt Fradd had interviewed you.
That I enjoyed the episode was expected; what I was especially curious about, however, was seeing the wider audience response. I was heartened to find goodwill recognizing goodwill, on the whole, and that so many viewers found the discussion fruitful. I'm praying this interview creates (or at least indicates) a healthy and necessary shift in the Overton window of the Catholic world, allowing devout and pious Catholics of different stripes to discuss the liturgy with greater charity and openness.
Yes, I was quite happy to see the predominantly positive reaction in the comments.
Thank you for a wonderful interview and for this resource list! Outstanding!
Dr K, there's no doubt that you have remain consistent,in humbly delivery of the Catholic faith in it tradition and purity,may God continue to bless you!
One resource that is missing: what tie are you wearing in the interview? It is lovely.
I don't remember where I got it from, I've had it for 2 decades! Thanks for the compliment.
Mindblown. Ive been a TLM loving Novus Ordo attender, but a pretty ignorant one. Many things I had no idea. My only real substantial objection was I felt the new Lectionary was definitely and objectively an improvement, but Dr K shattered that for me. I will be going FSSP after this, but I do have and have had a concern that they are forcing us into ghettos away from our local parishes and consequently parishioners. For this reason, I feel obligated to keep a full foot hold in my local parish as well.
Thank you!
If you weren't yet able to read this article, it will complete the circuit re: the lectionary:
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2022/03/full-text-of-dr-kwasniewskis-talk-on.html
I agree about the importance of parishes. This was the genius of Summorum Pontificum, that it brought the positive presence and influence of the TLM right home to the parish. But Pope Francis destroyed that, and Leo has not yet seen fit to reverse TC (though it will have to reversed eventually).
I understand if you don't see eye to eye with me on this point but I have reached the conclusion that the wisdom and power of tradition, its capacity to shape our interior life and our family life, is so important that it outweighs even the local parish community. And I think the number of people who attend the FSSP chapels (and others like them) end up finding a new and often better community there.
God bless you and Mary keep you!
You mentioned Ratzinger’s Theology of the Liturgy around 53:00-54:00. I recommend postings link to that book.
I found this long quote on YouTube feed :
J. Ratzinger on the Protestant influence on the Liturgical Movement after Vatican Il and the Way Forward:
It seems to me that as early as the 1950s, and certainly after the Council, the latent and, likewise, the patent risks in the Liturgical Movement constituted a great temptation, a serious danger for the Church.
After the Council there was a new situation, because the liturgists had acquired a de facto authority: the authority of the Church was being recognized less and less, and now the expert became the authority.
This transfer of authority to the experts transformed everything, and these experts in turn were the victims of an exegesis profoundly influenced by the opinions of Protestantism, that is to say, that the New Testament was against the category of sacredness, against cult and priesthood, and thus at the opposite pole to the great tradition, above all that of the Council of Trent.
Thus, we have to be aware that with a secularized exegesis, and with a hermeneutic system that is profoundly Protestant and secularized, we can not find the basis of our faith in the New Testament; and that with the fragmentation of the liturgy, when it is considered as being the particular action of the local congregation, then we lose sight of the Church and, along with the Church, of faith and mystery. What we need, in contrast to this, is to return to an exegesis rooted in the living reality of the Church, the Church of all ages -especially the Church of the Fathers -but of the Church of truly all the ages: even the Church of the Middle Ages.
We need also, therefore, to rediscover cultic reality and the sacral priesthood in the New Testament and to win back the essentials for the liturgy; in that sense, I wanted to say that, within the limitations that are certainly to be found in the documents of Trent, Trent remains the norm, as reread with our greater knowledae and deeper understandina of the Fathers and of the New Testament, as read with the Fathers and with the Church of all ages.
Theology of The Liturgy (Joseph Ratzinger Collected Works Vol 11), Ignatius Press, 2014, pgs 561-562.
Yes!! Fantastic. He saw what happened, and lamented it.
I was heartened by your love for Card. Ratzinger, but now, seeing his grief over the liturgical changes, I'm quite perplexed. Did he imagine a well-catechised laity would grieve but persevere, counting on the underlying [camouflaged] theology of the Mass to carry them through the coming centuries? Yes, he wrote Summorum Pontificum, but did he really think that was enough? I admit to being baffled that someone with such authority would grieve, shrug, and hope for the best (while knowing that the laity was actually not well-catechised at all).
It's like a train wreck that not only caused destruction because of the initial event, but the cargo is leaking all sorts of toxins into the water table, the passengers still trapped inside, and the engineers sending other trains along the same line, hoping for a better outcome.
Honestly, I keep thinking that I've missed something--this is entirely untenable.
Bravo! That was a tour de force, Dr. K.! And Matt Fradd was an excellent interlocutor.
I was born and raised Catholic. Went to Benedictine College and was ingrained in the liturgical practices of the Benedictines. I was very close to my faith during that period. But over the past 20 years, it slipped, and during COVID, stepped away for a couple of years. As I found my way back, I found my faith deepening.
A lot of my reading and prayer has been centered on the ancient church and the Saints and Mystics of the church. And through that began to notice the gaps in the liturgical practices.
A friend began inviting me to his Eastern Orthodox church, and the beauty and mystery of the liturgy were overwhelming. I've been going more regularly and have been contemplating and inquiring about a conversion.
While there is a church that does a Latin mass, it is outside of the normal flow of masses and therefore outside of the calendar of community gatherings (which would impact my kids and their ability to participate in Sunday School and sacramental prep). There is a Byzantine Church, but it is an hour away... and similarly, we wouldn't be part of that community.
Praying, trying to listen to my heart, and trying to listen to God.
It is so tragic that Catholics in the West have a tradition as rich as the Orthodox, but it is so often hidden from them or even taken away by the modernists (and their useful idiots) in our midst. As one who loves the Byzantine liturgy, I appreciate very much your perspective. On the other hand, as beautiful as the Orthodox liturgy is, their ecclesiology is a mess (and has been for a long, long time), their moral theology is incoherent, and there is a general lack of clarity about what they believe and do not believe, which I think no amount of mysticism and incense can overcome. In reality, what we need is our Western tradition, rich and strong, whether Byzantine Catholic or Tridentine Catholic. I regret that you live so far away from a good community of that kind.
You might appreciate these articles:
https://onepeterfive.com/wanderer-church-membership/
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/09/counterpoints-to-hieromonks-letter.html
May the Holy Spirit guide you in your discernment.
I really appreciate your response and the articles you shared. They gave me a lot to think about, especially the way they both acknowledge the beauty and depth of the Western tradition while also being honest about the crisis we’re living through right now.
I don’t want to romanticize either side. Being part of the Western tradition, I’ve been seeing a lot of the problems up close.
When I’ve debated with Orthodox friends, I sometimes find myself saying, “Yes, Catholicism teaches that too, but you don’t hear it taught that way very often.”
Take confession. The Catechism calls it both a sacrament of healing and a judicial act. But what I’ve usually experienced is priests leaning heavily on the courtroom side. The healing, medicinal side often gets downplayed, and within the Catholic tradition, I have found myself having to figure out the healing part by myself.
The same is true with how salvation and our relationship with God are presented. Catholicism teaches divinization, but in many parishes it gets reduced to “stay in a state of grace so you can go to heaven.” At my Catholic parish, during a Sunday School parent meeting, the leader told us, “God isn’t within us when we aren’t in a state of grace.” Yes, that reflects a real point of Catholic doctrine, but it’s incomplete. Our sin blinds us, like looking through a dirty window (to use a metaphor from Sts John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila), but the light is still shining. That tension—between what the Church actually teaches and how it gets oversimplified or distorted at the parish level—has been hard to live with.
And it frames how people think about the afterlife. It can sound like a retirement plan: “I did all the right things, I stayed out of mortal sin, now I get the reward.” Instead of seeing that the opportunity to leave and breath every moment to draw closure to God.
I had a prayer life—daily Rosary, Jesus Prayer, Liturgy of the Hours—prior to this inquiry. It wasn’t until I started using an Orthodox prayer book, praying the same prayers morning and night, that I began feeling the effects of prayer. Over the past several weeks, I have experienced the truest sense of repentance I have ever felt as a result of these prayers.
With this inquiry, I am wrestling with what it means to “pick up the cross.” Is the cross for me to stay rooted in the Catholic Church, holding to tradition in my own home and practice, even if it feels like I’m carrying it alone at times? Or is the cross to detach from the modernity in Catholic life into a more traditional approach that is accessible and takes on the weight of conversion? Both paths feel heavy, and neither one is just about me. I have three kids. My wife. My household as a whole to consider this.
That’s where I’m at right now: praying, listening, trying to discern what Christ is asking.
Yes. This is a matter for deep discernment, and for patience, and not for haste.
The Orthodox have preserved much that the West has lost. Part of the reason they have preserved it is that they have no leader among them who could disturb the equilibrium. This is beautiful in its own way, but also partly explains why they have been so poor at missionary work and addressing modern challenges: when you have no leader, you have no possibility of growth, with the good and bad challenges that implies.
What you say about the cross in both scenarios resonates loudly with me.
I’ll be listening to this interview tonight! I’ve been looking forward to this since you announced it.
I can't wait to listen, thank you for sharing!
Best. Interview. Ever. Hands down!