November 2022 Print

By Dorian Arnold

1. Tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up, and what was your level of exposure to Catholicism as a child and as a young adult?

I grew up in Denver, Colorado. My mother is the granddaughter of an Irish Catholic pioneer who was one of the families that helped to build the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. Her mother married a Protestant. My father grew up on a farm in Kinderhook, New York. His mother, my Nana, was an Irish Catholic who married a German Protestant. My father’s love of the Latin Mass, and his longing for it, was a powerful influence in our lives. On Sunday mornings my three brothers and I would pile into his little car with classical Gregorian chant blaring on the radio, and we’d speed down to the Cathedral. He would make us all hold hands and we’d jaywalk across Colfax and up the steps to the big brass doors. I remember the powerful organ music that vibrated my heart and the incense floating up to heaven. I would stare at the stained glass windows and make up stories about the holy people in them while my brothers tried to make each other laugh. My dad would always sing along with the choir, his strong tenor hitting the high notes. He would wipe away tears when they sang the Ave Maria. On the way home we’d listen to Luciano Pavarotti, his favorite. My mom preferred to go to Holy Ghost Church by herself on Sundays. I never knew that this was unusual until I was an adult. As a teenager I was allowed to go with her sometimes. I think she wanted to pray by herself. We were pretty wild kids, so I imagine those moments alone with God were precious to her and my dad wanted to give her a break. Her cousin was also a priest in the Archdiocese so she liked to see him. In the ’80s my brothers were able to serve the Latin Mass with one of the only priests given permission in Denver, which my Dad loved because he was an altar boy. Sometimes we would go to Mass with my Grandmother. She attended daily Mass for most of her life and later, sometimes twice in a day. She said, “One day I won’t be able to go to Mass so I have to save up all of the graces.” After she died, I inherited her Miraculous Medal that she got when she visited Rome in the 1930s.

I believe that because both of my grandfathers were Protestant, things were not very structured in our household with regard to our faith. In fact, I don’t remember ever praying as a family when we were little, only at Mass. For example, we didn’t say grace at the dinner table, but my mom would tell me to pray a Hail Mary if I had a nightmare or was ever scared. My Dad would always tell us that our health, our family, and the roof over our heads were signs of “The Good Lord looking out for us.” Later on, when my dad was in his last years, he developed a really strong devotion to Padre Pio and prayed basically all the time.

I attended Catholic school for nine years. My time there was marked by confusing and conflicting messages. Fortunately we had some of the last Loretto nuns in Denver as teachers. They were rock solid. I credit whatever shred of academic discipline I ever had to their vocation to form me. They insisted we celebrate the traditional May Crowning and taught us all the beautiful Marian hymns. In spite of their efforts, things were falling apart in the Church in the ’70s and ’80s. These were the years of guitar Masses and even liturgical dancing.

By the time I was 16, I was on my way out of the Church. My mother’s last attempt to prevent it was to take me to a retreat at the Trappist Monastery in Snowmass. There a monk told me to go ahead and try other religions (I was interested in Buddhism at the time) because my roots were in Catholicism and I would surely, eventually, return. His prediction was correct, Dieu Merci, but only after twenty years of misery and suffering. My heart as a young girl was so thirsty for the True Faith, but instead they gave me the spiritual equivalent of a Diet Coke.

2. What experience first piqued your interest in Tradition?

My quest was not for Tradition but for Truth. I never thought about Tradition. Unknowingly, I was just searching my whole life for what was promised to me at my Baptism as a baby. I even looked outside of Catholicism for this. Having my own child was the first unselfish act in my adult life, and that began the process of my return, thanks to the intercession of Our Lady. It was after his baptism that I returned to the Catholic Church in earnest.

By the Grace of God, a series of events led me to the Latin Mass community in Colorado. I absolutely loved everything about the Latin Mass: the military precision of the movements, the quiet, even the illustrations in the missal my friend shared with me. It brought me so much peace, but for some reason I categorized that experience in my mind as something that was reserved for special occasions. Also, it seemed like all these Latin Mass Catholics were very stern and overly solemn. I didn’t understand the clandestine nature of the TLM community.

3. Why did you settle on the SSPX as opposed to some other TLM community?

At first I came to the SSPX because I couldn’t bear the thought of receiving Holy Communion in my hands as was required at my parish during COVID. I heard about St. Isidore’s on Taylor Marshall’s YouTube channel, where he interviewed Fr. Robinson. Father very kindly agreed to allow me to sign up for a slot for one of the Masses and I’ve been at the SSPX ever since.

Not only was this Mass, and St. Isidore’s, the perfect antidote to the poison of the tyrannical lockdowns, but it also was the medicine for my soul and my son’s that I had been seeking all these years. I was delighted to discover Archbishop Lefebvre and read all about him and his courage. What an act of heroism for that gentle priest who already had many fruitful years as a missionary. His response to Vatican II was one of true fidelity to the Church, to Truth and to God Himself. “Given the gradual degradation of the priestly ideal, [we must] transmit, in all its doctrinal purity, in all its missionary charity, the Catholic priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as He transmitted it to His apostles and as the Roman Church transmitted it until the mid-20th century.”

Archbishop Lefebvre’s mandate has been carried out faithfully and his spirit is evident in my experience thus far with the SSPX. Now that the priesthood is secured, the faithful are free to build thriving Catholic communities around them, like the monasteries in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

4. What issues did you wrestle with during your conversion to Tradition, and how have you found resolutions to those concerns?

One of my main issues is that I am furious. The post-conciliar madness that infected our beautiful Church was the result of evil corruption and bad ideas dreamed up by liturgical reformers. What was proposed at the Vatican Council went way beyond the liturgical reforms and constituted a radical break from the Faith itself. The Benedict Band-aid of the hermeneutic of continuity was simply an ineffectual academic exercise, totally useless to stem the catastrophic hemorrhage caused by the grave conciliar wound. One can easily draw correlations between this wound and the wages of sin upon a whole generation of souls. It’s been an absolute disaster, one that affected me personally and my whole family. Thankfully, as a laywoman I don’t have to prove this theologically here, as there are countless articles written by good and holy priests of the SSPX which go through each nuance and change in the “new” liturgy and how it undermined the essential intent of every sacrament.

But now that I know the Truth, I want to rescue all of those one billion baptized Catholics who have no idea what they are missing. My heart aches for those young men who were truly called to their vocation in the priesthood by God. Think of how demoralized they must be by what is happening. They responded in all sincerity to that supernatural call but are forced to serve the banal, effeminate, administrative life of a glorified manager. How they must be suffering!

People don’t wake up and say, “Wow, I’m really glad I’m in the Novus Ordo Church.” We are raised in it and come to accept it, or like I did, leave it. From what I’ve gathered from my mom, who experienced the change in the ’60s, very few people opposed these big moves. The laymen were to be obedient to the Pope and never questioned the hierarchy. Furthermore, it would be impossible for Catholics like my mom to think that her friendly parish priest would have anything but her best interests and the salvation of her soul in mind. So she went along with it, and now my dear mother defends it.

Similarly, I just can’t imagine my great grandfather wondering if he was a traditional Catholic, although he was. No one posed the question. He lived a fully integrated Catholic life. When the good Bishop Machebeuf persuaded him, along with many others, to help build the Cathedral for all the new pioneer families moving to Colorado, he didn’t resist. He figured out a way to find the cash, or the lumber. My grandmother and her sisters and brothers threw themselves into the Holy Days and fundraisers for the new church bells with the same enthusiasm that they went to school, rode horses and flyfished the beaver ponds in the High Country.

I can’t fully express just how grateful I am to have found the SSPX, a sanctuary of sanctity. The Mass, the priesthood and the supernatural life of Catholics are all bound together by a history that stretches back to the Apostles. Thanks be to God, I have reclaimed that legacy for myself and my son. However, I still don’t consider myself a “Traditional” Catholic. I consider myself a Catholic. I don’t believe that there are two types: the Traditional kind, and the Novus Ordo kind. I think there are only those that have been told the Truth and those who have been told a lie.

5. What practices or devotions within Tradition have you found to be most fruitful for you?

Assisting the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a balm for my soul, it has changed my life profoundly. My son and I have also now added a rosary to our nightly prayers along with a prayer to St. Joseph which we still pray after the novena from March. Our library has expanded exponentially, partly with recommended texts from Angelus Press but also from a new friend who hosts a ladies’ book club for St. Isidore’s. Her book list is outstanding. I also love the annual Cabrini Shrine Pilgrimage and the Processions for Corpus Christi and Our Lady of the Rosary.

6. Now that you are a traditional Catholic, what are the greatest challenges that you face?

In the ’70s there was this cheesy song played with guitars and bongo drums called “They Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” That is a nice sentiment, and true Christian charity is a virtue to be sure. Lately though, I’ve been thinking about how the Holy Spirit compels us to act, and that perhaps a bias toward action may be the defining feature of Christians. I think those Apostles were so appealing to the early pagans because of their extraordinary ability to make things happen. I have been reading about all of the early saints, and one of the consistent themes is how hard they worked and what they accomplished by sheer force of will and the fire of the Holy Spirit. Our Blessed Mother went into action immediately after the Annunciation to visit Elizabeth, in haste. After a couple of years I still struggle to keep up with the pace of the SSPX. The priests are the Navy Seals of the Church and the families I’ve met are tireless, including the kids. Those young boys serving at the Easter Vigil are like little knights, standing strong into the wee hours. The ladies are especially stoic—never a complaint, even with so many duties. These are hard-core Catholics, in the best way possible.

7. Do you have any advice for the reader who may be considering, but not yet committed to, Tradition?

Do whatever it takes to conform your life to the One True Catholic Church.

St. Isidore’s Church & Priory, Watkins (Denver), CO.

 

TITLE IMAGE: John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), The Façade of La Salute, Venice (c. 1903).