Tradicat

 + JMJ I am not a 'cradle' Traditional Catholic. In fact, one of my earliest 'church memories' is of the pews in my family's first parish.  Specifically, how they tasted. I remember a lot of people standing up around me as I got as much of the pew in my mouth as possible.   At that moment as I reached the sweet spot, an older lady caught my eye and I got the impression she was less that impressed that I had achieved the maximally effective amount of pew in my 4 year-old mouth. Looking back, I realised that the parish of my youth was a haven for Conservative Catholics. The Pastor had succeeded in isolating the parish from much of the madness of the 1970's. The result of a conservative parish with doctrinally sound teaching, catechesis and confessions was a parish packed to capacity. The downside, as I heard decades later, was that when a young member of that parish moved into another parish, he found a completely different Church from the one in which he had grow...

 + JMJ I came to Tradition a few years after they had bought a chapel. My wife told me of the earlier years when Fr. Normandin would come to town and Mass would be held in a room at the convention centre.  He'd start by blessing the room and then proceed with Mass. This went on for a while before the one of the faithful found a small hall that would suit just fine. They pooled their money and bought the building.  Then came the work as the retiree's refinished the floor, setup the sactuary. Oh, did I mention that I heard that the hall had been used by a motorcycle gang? The floor needed a lot of work.  I remember seeing pictures of the founders working to make the hall into a fitting place for the Sacrifice of the Mass. That little chapel would be a refuge like many others serviced by Fr. Normandin.  From Thunderbay, Ontrario to Nanaimo, British Columbia - the SSPX chapels are all the results of Fr. Normandin's missionary work in those desperate times. Without h...

 + JMJ To say the least, my own family's discovery of Tradition was tumultuous. For some reason one of my older brothers was started on a path to search into what came before 1965.  This led him to intense conversations with our parish priest.  Ok, they were arguments and resulted in a veiled reference to him in a sermon. Our parish priest was a canon lawyer, had studied in Rome. Sprinkled throughout the Church were 'relics' of the Tridentine Mass. In the Sacristy you'd see the six altar candles.  The original tabernacle was on a side altar (of which he'd kept two). Statues were everywhere, not completely out of sight, but out of mind. He kept the thurible. No girl altar servers were present in the sanctuary, nor were their lay Eucharistic ministers.  The sermons were Catholic. When I was there for a funeral, Father preached on the Rosary.  It made a deep impression on me and I still remember it as the best sermon on the Rosary that I had ever heard. Lookin...

 + JMJ After the Second Vatican Council there was a marked decline in many of the Catholic Orders with thousands of priests, nuns and brothers abandoning their religious life or in some cases being pushed out because they didn't want to 'adapt' to the modern age full of self-loathing. As their numbers shrank, properties were sold or repurposed.  I know of one Benedictine Convent built in the sixties that ended up being leased for non-Catholic purposes. The Trappists were not immune to this hollowing out of Catholicism and monasteries were closed and sold off as their numbers vanished. One monastery was visited by Traditional Catholics in the 80's, at which point the Monks had been gone for since the late 70's. The reason given was the encroachment of the nearby city.  In their move the Monks exhumed the bodies of the communities dead and moved them to their new location. What they left behind was telling. A Statue of Our Lady, high up on a pedestal in the Church. Pl...

 + JMJ Following the thread of the internal persecution of Catholics (Bishops, Priests, Monks, Nuns, Brothers) who were repulsed by the 'new way' that swallowed the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council, I have one story that I witnessed the end stages when my family started to attend the Tridentine Mass in the early 80's. As I've mentioned before, I didn't want to be there as we walking into the little chapel. It was small, maybe it could hold 80 people.  It smelled, small building imbued with incense - a new experience.  It was strange, very strange. It was a small chapel, a hall purchased by a group of pioneering Traditional Catholics to be their anchor in a Catholic World gone mad. They had started as a rosary group in a layman's basement. Then when Fr. Normandin started travelling across Canada, they rented a room at the convention centre. Those were heady days of First Fervour. When news that Fr. would unexpectedly be in town, the call went out:...

 + JMJ In the late 1990s / early 2000s, caches of religious goods were few and far between.  In the 80's, I remember walking into the 'Big Gym' in St. Mary's and seeing the dozens of marble altars waiting in the dusty shadows. Waiting for the call to serve once again as the place for the Sacrifice. Then I heard that one of the old Catholic Churches was going to be torn down and that the parish priest was giving things away. These were things that practically no one had use for any more.   Ombrellino / Conpaeum: An umbrella with a long staff that protects the Blessed Sacrament during processions. Ornate Canopy: Held aloft by four or more men to shelter the Blessed Sacrament or relics Three Quarters Scale Crucifix: I believe it was the main crucifix in the Church An ornate shelter for the Monstrance during longer benedictions Large statue of the Sacred Heart I believe there was more but all the same, after a decade dry spell - it was wonderful to put these 'relics...

 + JMJ I want to drive home something I mentioned in my last post.  Missals - Altar and Laity were precious finds - especially ones from the John XXIII changes in the 60s.  Even more so were the Libers - many a time I've been caught with a 1950's version and losing my place when singing the passion as the Synagoga. I remember digging through a store room full of boxes of book and in I found Libers, Besniers (book of latin hymns), Missals.   All of these were used well into the 2000's, until the SSPX printed the first version of its own Hymnal. While I miss some of the old hymns, I don't miss the random collections of photo copied pieces. P^3

 + JMJ In the storm that engulfed the Catholic Church immediately post-conciliar, those who didn't want to go down the 'new path' were persecuted far worse than the laity. I have heard stories about priests having difficulty 'adapting' and 'adopting' were sent to Rome.   One who had to be sent back twice because the first time wasn't enough. An Ultra-Conservative Canon Lawyer who also was sent to Rome. Priests weren't the only ones, nuns also were persecuted. I've heard of: One who after years of pain in the post conciliar era, arranged to change back into her old habit right before she died. One who resorted to dumpster diving and sneaking out missals, books, and teaching materials to pass on to those who wanted to hold on to the pre-conciliar ways and teaching. Further, I heard this last one spent years smuggling out books and other articles that were, I understand, destined for the trash-heap / BFI bin. All of those materials (missals, vestmen...

 + JMJ  Over the decades (yep that long) I've heard and repeated a lot of stories to my family and friends - about family and friends :-). It was suggested that I pull them together and preserve here a record of these stories for the future. Some will be religious in nature, others about events that I witnessed directly or heard from other Traditional Catholics. So I have created a new Series called, for obvious reasons, Stories, in which I will recount the stories I've heard of Traditional Life, concealing the identities of those involved and embellishing with relish where my memory fails. Afterall, they're just stories. P^3  

 + JMJ I remember hearing stories when we first 'joined' Tradition back in the early 80's. The first was about the iconclasm (link)   that happened in the 70's. Things I heard: A room full of blessed statues were deliberately damaged so they could be thrown away. Fishermen on the East Coast set sail with a load of statues and dumped them overboard. Beautifully painted ceilings with Catholic art were white washed in the 70's. A priest told me about this in the 2010's and wondered out loud at the wanton destruction for no reason.  I knew the reason.  It was simple that all these were artifacts of something that various leaders of the Church didn't want to believe in. A Trappist Monastery being abandoned because the 'city was too close'.  Things left behind that should not have been, like altar linens. The developer offered the monastery to the  As Traditional Catholics, these are unchangeable things that we still believe. ... and other Catholics are sl...