Do We Need A 'Catholic Identity'?

T.S. Elliot once famously said, "Good writers borrow. Great writers steal." All budding writers start out borrowing from their favorite authors, parroting and trying on different styles and voices. The end goal (usually after years of trial) is to find your own voice that is distinctly yours, giving homage to your influences but no longer feeling the need to draw from them anymore. Writers are famously insecure at their core, craving affirmation and simultaneously guarding themselves while tenuously putting their most intimate thoughts and emotions on full display. I'm not sure if writers ever fully transcend that feeling of insecurity ("Am I good? Am I worthy? Do I matter? Tell me I'm good, that I'm worthy, that I matter!"). But if one does, you can be sure they are not far from the Kingdom of God.

Half the battle of being human is knowing who we truly are, not who we purport to be. But the other part of the equation as, unique to those who are Christian believers, is knowing who we are in Christ. For "in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28). In the early stages of conversion, we are "putting on the new man" and shedding our old lives as a snake sheds its skin; then, we are figuring out not what to live for, but how to live. For those who have grown up with the faith of their parents passed on to them, it is a variation of this metamorphosis that involves finding one's own faith and claiming it as one's own. 

Catholics are not a homogeneous group, but there is some shared commonality in what we believe (credo), the language we use, and how we conduct ourselves. This is the social/cultural component of religious affiliation that secularists are not privy to. There is also a lot of room for a diversity of individual thought and expression, which is why I love our Faith--it respects who we are while anchoring us to something beyond ourselves.

Have you ever met someone who didn't seem to be comfortable in their own skin? There's always that humorous example of the guy who drives the big truck who may be, er, compensating for shortages in other areas. Or someone who drinks too much and talks loudly with bravado to cover up the emptiness and fear they feel in social situations. In any case, it's always a little awkward to be around, because people should, in theory, be who they are and accepted for it. But the social element of being human is a strong current, and sometimes dictates we conform rather than stand out (See my post, The Hardest Thing For A Person To Do Is Go Against Their Tribe, 18 November 2021)

We often flex what kind of Catholic we are in little ways. It's a good case study in religious anthropology.It could come out in saying "the Holy Ghost" instead of "the Holy Spirit," or calling the pope Bergoglio, instead of Francis, or in the shows one allows their children to watch on TV (or shunning entertainment altogether). Oftentimes this is just because people make conscious choices about how they want to live their lives or express their faith which is perfectly legitimate, but sometimes it's also to fit in and fold themselves in to the social current. 

These are the external adornments and expressions of our faith, in both primary and secondary matters. It's often objective and clearly defined. What can be harder, though, is tapping the well of the inner spirit where God dwells and translating the whispers (1 Kings 19:11-13). This is the realm of the subjective--the soul, the conscience, intuition, the sanctuary (where we abide in mental prayer), the commands of God that are decreed with wordless words and expected to be carried out unique to our circumstances. 

When we don't spend time in prayer, we don't spend time with the Lord. Period. And one cannot know Him or be saved who does not pray. 

But it is not enough to just pray--we must learn how to love--we can only love because He first loved us (1 Jn 4:19), and we can only love Him by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Then we are expected to love others as Christ loved us (Jn 13:24), which must be carried out in word and deed (1 Jn 4:20). We can know God because of the Incarnation. But we come to know Him through devoted time in personal prayer and immersing ourselves in his Word.

Just as God issued the primary Commandment to love God with all one's heart, soul, and mind (Mt 22: 36-40), so too must our primary identity as Catholics be in Christ and Christ alone. For Catholics, the understanding is that Christ is inseparable from his Bride, the Church, and so to imagine a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" apart from the Church is untranslatable. The relationship of the Catholic Christian to the Church should not be as a member of an exclusive country club. As in today's reading, we are expected to be wearing garments suited to the wedding feast lest we be thrown out (Mt 22:1-14). 

But that should not be our primary preoccupation--the external trappings of our religious heritage. Instead, our focus should be intimacy with Christ, forging our identity in the furnace of personal prayer, purgation, and penance. In this kiln, we come to know who God is, what He wants from us, and how to carry it out. This is the realm of conformity to the Divine Will, not imitation of others for the purposes of fitting in with a religious bloc. If we keep our focus in this realm, it will inspire a great grace, and that is confidence. 

Any woman knows that a man with confidence fans the flames of attraction and commands response. And any man knows that a woman who knows her true, inalienable inner worth is a beauty to behold. These qualities, however, cannot be cheaply imitated any more than you can force-feed a flower chemical fertilizer in order to get it to bloom faster. When a Christian has confidence in God and his standing before God, he knows he answers only to Him. He lowers his eyes before the majesty of God, yet raises them steadfastly before men. He knows he will be judged on the state of his heart as well as his deeds, not on the length of his proverbial phylacteries or his temple offerings. 

And so his preoccupation is not on fitting in to a Catholic club, but on pleasing God and doing His will at every moment. He does not overcompensate, because he doesn't have to; he was nothing to prove, because his deeds are beyond reproach (1 Tim 3:2) and his contrition sincere. Being Catholic should be as natural as breathing.

God inspires confidence because He is trustworthy. Likewise, the confident Christian inspires others because he simply reflects that confidence of his standing before God into the world; not as a man wearing a cheap, ill-fitting shirt that doesn't belong to him, but one who wears a tasteful, tailored suit that was custom designed for him by a master of his craft. 

When we lack in this confidence in ourselves (that is, who we are in Christ), we tend to latch on and attach to a need for a Catholic or Christian identity to prove (either consciously or unconsciously) how "Catholic" or “Christian” we are to others. This may satisfy a social need, or come from a place of insecurity or overcompensation when we are unsure of who we are as Catholics/Christians. And so we seek out the affirmation in the externals, rather than entering into the cold, quiet cell of our hearts where the real work takes place, the way someone would read books about prayer rather than praying, or be preoccupied with the right cleats and gloves instead of spending hours in the batting cage. 

Remember--we will be judged on one thing and one thing alone: our charity--to God, and likewise to others, especially the most vulnerable. And we will be judged alone, apart from our communities and parishes, where nothing will be hidden and all will be revealed. The Divine Judge will see straight into our hearts at that time so piercingly that we will feel our nakedness with an unrivaled acuteness. And the love with which He does so will be so pure, so unfiltered that it will completely undo any of our feeble defenses that we were so preoccupied in keeping up in this life. We will know who we are once and for all, and see ourselves in that moment as Christ always saw us. Our true identity as adopted children of God will then be the only thing that matters. There will be nothing left to try to prove or compensate for--only Love to accept and embrace. 

When to Follow the Crowd...and When Not To

When I was in high school, and before I was a Christian myself, I remember driving by the local Catholic church with my father one day. Mass must have just been getting out, as people were leaving the church en masse and walking to their cars. "Sheep," I muttered under my breath. "They're all sheep." As a general non-conformist and angsty punk-rock teenager who was ignorant of religion, it was a predictable response. But I remember it being visceral as well, a kind of disgust of "the masses" blindly following social norms and conforming themselves to something "good people did" (which was going to church). The fact that I remember using the term "sheep" was curious in itself, given the scriptural foundation for followers of Jesus. The reaction from my father--himself a Catholic, though one who left my brothers and I to our own discernment regarding religion--was swift, a kind of "How dare you" response. 

Curious also was my feeling of being conflicted over the scene and the competing emotions. I scoffed at groups of people all doing and thinking the same thing in uniformity, pitying them in a sense. But there was also a part of me that envied them. I wrestled with the human and religious questions as a teenager--why are we here? what is the purpose of life?, where do we go when we die?, how can I be happy?--but I was like an explorer without a map. Here were people honoring a prescribed mandate (to keep holy the Sabbath), and they knew where to go to do that (in this case, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel parish). 

Like many of the teachings of Christ, The Way is paradoxical--God gave us the Law through Moses and the fulfillment of the Law He gave to us in His son. Those who were once in darkness have seen a great light, for they now have a way back to God: through Christ. 

W.C. Fields said, "A dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to stream upstream." We fight against our own concupiscence, as well as the allure of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. And as the Lord Christ makes clear in his teaching, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it" (Mt 7:13-14). 

If we follow the ways of the world, we can be assured we are not on the narrow road. And so we are expected to follow Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and conform our life to his. As Catholics, we know we are meant to travel this road as a corporal body, not as individuals divorced from it. We account for our lives before the just Judge alone, but we do not get before the Throne on our own.

There are times when it is good practice to follow the herd, for sometimes it is for good reason. If you are driving on the highway and everyone is merging to the right lane because of construction, we would do well to follow suite. We all know that guy who insists on doing the opposite and then finds himself stuck with his turn signal on at the last moment, trying to make his way in to avoid the barriers. 

Likewise in the liturgy. As Catholics, we sit, kneel, stand at prescribed times, respond in unison at the appropriate times. It is not the place for following one's whims, or improv-ing with raised hands or free-wheeling vocal prayer. Were one to do so, they would not be praying with the mind of the Church in this context. 

And yet, even within the Church we are sometimes faced with scenarios in which we are called to swim upstream. When you look around you and everyone is receiving Communion in the hand, for instance, one may think this is what they should do so as not to stand out. But sometimes conscience dictates we do otherwise--either through refraining from receiving at all, or doing so by kneeling and receiving on the tongue. If you are blessed with a Latin Mass parish, this is a non-issue, as Communion in the hand is not given (which is how it should be). In this sense, conformity with established norms and practices is a light yoke, since it removes the tension and burden of having to buck the trend by being an outlier.

The Asch "Line Experiments" in the 1950's were an interesting case study, where 75% of 123 college-aged males answered a relatively simple question incorrectly when influenced by the majority. In the control group (not exposed to majority influence), the rate was 1%. "That intelligent, well-meaning, young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern," he noted. 

In "The Hardest Thing For A Person To Do Is Go Against Their Tribe," I made reference to an Atlantic article from 2017 in which the author wrote,

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change,” Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter wrote in When Prophecy Fails, their 1957 book about this study. “Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point … Suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before.

“You spread stories because you know that they’re likely to be a kind of litmus test, and the way people react will show whether they’re prepared to side with you or not,” Boyer says. “Having social support, from an evolutionary standpoint, is far more important than knowing the truth about some facts that do not directly impinge on your life.” The meditation and sense of belonging that Daniel Shaw got from Siddha Yoga, for example, was at one time more important to his life than the alleged misdeeds of the gurus who led the group.

Shaw describes the motivated reasoning that happens in these groups: “You’re in a position of defending your choices no matter what information is presented,” he says, “because if you don’t, it means that you lose your membership in this group that’s become so important to you.” Though cults are an intense example, Shaw says people act the same way with regard to their families or other groups that are important to them.

The inference of conformity to the state of the world should be obvious. But it gets a little more gray when it comes to our duty as Christians within the Church. The strongest Christians are usually those who have weighed the evidence, determined the stakes, and discerned the costs of following Christ and do so anyway. This can include those who have a strong non-conformist personality but who nonetheless discern the truth of Catholicism. The weakest are those who go to Mass or believe "because I was raised this way," or "I don't know, it's just what we do" unreflexively.

And yet, in relation to Christ, he still refers to his flock as sheep--those who follow a voice they know, who act unthinkingly in a herd, who have an innocent desire to simply follow. The wolf, by contrast, is one who breaks in to the pen to cause carnage--instinctual, prowling, aggressive, and led by no one. 

In Matthew 10:16, Christ admonishes us to be "wise as serpents, and innocent as doves," and commends shrewdness as well (Lk 16:1-15). He tells his disciples regarding the Pharisees, "do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach" (Mt 23:23). Again, there is this uncomfortable paradox: we are not to conform ourselves to the ways of the world, but to Christ and his teachings, which should be obvious. Less obvious is how we should conform our behavior of our fellow Christians within the Church.

As in many instances, the saints give us the example, as St. Paul gave to the Corinthians to "be imitators of me" (1 Cor 11:1). Were St. Thomas More or St. John Fisher to conform themselves to their fellow bishops during their time, they would have found themselves on the road to perdition. Were St. Teresa of Avila not to have urged Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome from Avignon, we may have a very different Church today. Even modern day followers of Christ like Fr. Benedict Groeschel found it necessary to establish a new religious order (the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal) to get back to the roots of their charism of poverty, though it would have been 'easier' to stay with the Capuchins. 

In all these instances, this was not a matter of conformity, but conscience. As Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote so eloquently, 

"The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor expedience, nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor State convenience, nor fitness, order, and the pulchrum. Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives."

And therein lies the paradox: that Christ speaks to us behind a veil, and yet teaches and rules us by His representatives, just as he commanded his disciples to do everything the Pharisees told them, but not to do what they do. And so we conform in the macro, and discern in the micro. 

My personality as a non-conformist has not changed over the years; it is both surprising and unsurprising that I became a Catholic twenty-five years ago as a teenager, and have remained so to this day by God's grace. In doing so, I have sought to conform my will to Christ's, and my life to the teachings of his Church. I follow the same road as those who have gone before me, rather than bushwhacking and getting lost in the forest. In that, I am a sheep.

But if it is God's will I be a saint, there may come a time in which conforming my life to that of those around me within Her walls and resting in that comfort is not enough, as our Lord told St. Peter, "when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go" (Jn 21:18). This applies to all who wish to follow Christ and be baptized into his death. For the saint must walk alone. 

Outside The Wall

 "Tribalism, it's always worth remembering, is not one aspect of human experience. It's the default human experience. [And] one of the greatest attractions of tribalism is that you don't actually have to think very much. All you need to know on any given subject is which side you're on."

(Andrew Sullivan, "America Wasn't Built For Humans," New York Magazine)

A month or so ago, I prayed a nine day novena to Mary, Undoer of Knots, for deliverance "from the esteem and adulation of men,"  as well as for the grace to be extricated from social distraction and that which keeps me from being singularly-focused on the Lord. I realize this is kind of vague, and even when I felt compelled to ask for this grace, I didn't exactly know what it meant, only that things like pride and vainglory are a constant threat to my spiritual equilibrium. 

I believe Our Lady has honored that prayer and been gently pruning me limb from limb. The thing is, it is extremely painful. For the very thing I felt I needed, prayed for, and seemingly have received is the thing that puts me outside the wall of the very social comforts that have been making me spiritually uncomfortable. 

Today, for whatever reason, I felt this lack of established belonging so acutely in meditation that I found myself groaning, as it says in Psalm 5:1 "Give ear to my words, O Lord; consider my groaning." The Hebrew term hagah means to muse, growl, moan, utter. It is no surprise we find this term used in Jeremiah (the "weeping prophet") 48:31: "over the people of Kir-heres I moan." It made me realize how much I had been relying on men, on creatures (as Thomas a Kempis often cites), and that in having that being slowly peeled from my fingers produces the pain of detachment--the very thing I prayed for. 

When I go outside the walls of my home without leaving it, it is to enter into the place of prayer. This is literally the case, as my "hidden place"is actually between the inner and outer walls of our bathroom (the pipe closet). To enter into this place of prayer, one must get on one's hands and knees and enter through a small door about two feet wide by three feet high. It is adjacent to the toilet, so there is an extra layer of humiliation that is required to enter. It always reminds me of that Indiana Jones movie when the riddle "the penitent man will pass" requires the pilgrim to drop to his knees (and as a result, being saved from being decapitated by a booby trap). The pipe closet-slash-prayer mausoleum is freezing in the winter; since it a three foot by ten foot space outside the inner, insulated wall, I can often see my breath. So, it is uncomfortable to enter, uncomfortable to be in, and uncomfortable to spend much time in. And there is only room for one.

This is what being without a tribe feels like. There's a feeling of being in an uninsulated space, of being exposed, of not having the comfort or assurance of belonging, and the pain of literally going against what seems evolutionary hardwired in our nature. 

In many ways, this feels like the part 2 post to my post from two months ago, "The Hardest Thing For A Person To Do Is Go Against Their Tribe." On one level, one would think that being Catholic would solve this need for belonging, when in fact, Catholicism is anything but monolithic. It is tribes-within-a-tribe, and so it seems "We are all Catholic!" is a sentiment reserved for the wide-eyed and optimistic neophyte. 

It says in scripture that Jesus HAD to go through Samaria (Jn 4:4). But he didn't. He could have followed the other routes that pious Jews took in going east, crossing the Jordan, enter the region of Perea, heading north, recrossing the Jordan, and arriving in Galilee. But he doesn't do this. He took the direct route to meet the Samaritan woman at the well. These tribal boundaries didn't mean the same thing to him that it did to others. But this also was the same Lord who said, "foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head" (Mt 8:20). In following him, in imitating him, we can sometimes find ourselves outside the walls of our proverbial home and tribes without much company. The patristic eremites sought this out to enter into the solitude of the heart. St. Simeon lived on a pillar for Pete's sake. It wasn't that he hated men. It was that he could not enter into the place he was being called in their company.

My prayer for detachment from men was pure, but I don't think I realized the implications. If one of the strongest psychological tenants to our evolutionary survival is belonging to a tribe, and you find yourself outside whatever that state of belonging is for you, to what degree are we disadvantaging ourselves, especially when SHTF and things get rough and you find yourself without a tribe? I feel unsteady, uncomforted, unsure of myself, following God in the disorienting dark and just trying to focus on holding his right hand (Ps 18:35) to lead me. "I have become an outcast to my kindred, a stranger to my mother's children" (Ps 69:9). But I cannot say, "Zeal for your house has consumed me" (Ps 69:10), because it does not. I am between walls, in an uninsulated space. 

God, my God, lead me and do not let go of my hand. I am lost without you otherwise. 

"The Hardest Thing For A Person To Do Is Go Against Their Tribe"

I've been thinking about this for a long time. 

My family and I are 100% "in" on the Catholic faith. By extension, that means we are 100% in on the Catholic CHURCH, apart from which the Catholic faith cannot exist. 

But to lead with "we are 100% "in" on the Catholic Church" does not feel accurate or even appropriate. I have experienced enough insider baseball, abuse, dysfunction, manipulation, maleficence, obscurification, and ineptitude to say that I do not trust the Church with every fiber of my being. I give Christ my faith. He gives us the Church. For better or worse...til death do we part. But were it up to me, apart from Him, I would want nothing to do with this organization. I really can't explain it other than grace and perhaps, a kind of benevolent pair of blinders I've been gifted with.

But that's Big 'C' Church. Our little 'c' church is a healthy, thriving community for us. Our immediate parish, but also our larger Catholic community and fellowship of other homeschoolers, trads and non-trads, and everything in between. The faith is what binds us, the common thread that cinches us together. Were that to unravel for us, or lead us to some kind of dramatic apostasy, we may find ourselves 'on the outs' with our local IRL tribe.  

Maybe it is a spirit of self-preservation, but I tend to try to keep a healthy distance of investment in anything "too Catholic" the same way I don't engage too much with my immediate neighbors: we waive hi on the street, chit chat about this or that, watch out for one another, but there is a thick layer of insulating privacy there that keeps our relationship healthy. After all, we HAVE to live next to one another.

After hearing about the (what seemed to me to be) suffocating insularity of the lay Veritatis Splendor community and the unfortunate fall from grace in its leadership, I took it as a cautionary tale: I can say with pretty full confidence that I will never move my family to any kind of intentional/planned community, Catholic or otherwise. I've had some burns in the past, so maybe it is a degree of healthy skepticism/realism that it never seems to end well, and this unfortunate incident simply confirms that gut feeling. 

That being said, it's an incredibly confusing time for many people, myself included. I wish we would all just admit to one another that we're all just trying to figure things out and that no body really knows what is going on with one hundred percent certainty. I think because of that insecurity, many of us traditionally-minded Catholics find solace in our respective "tribes" of belonging. Where we can share what we are really thinking and feeling and working out, be supported and confirmed, and not feel so scared, crazy, and alone. After all, the world seems to be increasingly hostile to people of faith.

For the most part, I have been a 'floater' the majority of my life. In high school, I was friends with the jocks, the theater kids, the drug dealers, the poets and artists, the math whizzes; I floated from group to group, never establishing residency, as I was more comfortable not pledging allegiance. 

As I've gotten older, my "tribes" have changed, and are never set in stone. Though I will say I find great comfort and affinity with any brother or sister in Christ of good will who is a son or daughter of the Church, isn't a weirdo, and wants to do God's will. It is a healthy soil for potential friendships to take root. 

Social media gave me a false sense of belonging; I subconsciously tailored things I posted and said publicly so as not to make myself anathema. There was also that sense of selective-reinforcement of being bothered by dissenting push-back for something I might post among my liberal friends...and so I would prune and cut them out. As a result, my 'tribe' got tighter and more insular. I always kept an open mind about most things, though, so I was never especially dogmatic about many of my beliefs either. I was invested in the macro-items, but could take or leave the micro, or adjust accordingly. 

Then COVID happened, and I found myself straddling the aisle--not only trying to make sense of the world, the politics, and matters of personal and public health, but doing so in a compressed time period of instability where it was difficult to sift through all the facts and figures. I had to figure out who was full of crap, who had ulterior motives and agendas, who was playing favorites, who had vested interests. Sometimes, in trying to get straight and unbiased info, you find that some of the offenders may very well be members of your own tribe. "A man's foes shall be they of his own household" (Mt 10:36).

When the Dave Chappelle / trans thing blew up last month, Dave said something that stuck with me when was telling the story of his transgendered friend who stuck up for him even when s/he was getting raked over the coals on Twitter: "The hardest thing for a person to do," he said, "is go against their tribe." S/he eventually committed suicide in the wake of this public hazing (by her own "tribe"). How right he was.

I'm in a strange position as it relates to "the vax": I "got the jab" last year, not out of fear or even enthusiasm, but as a reasoned wager given our particular circumstances, using the best information I had at the time and knowing that I may or may not have made the best choice.  (Truth be told, I'm close to sick of hearing about it, and wish this whole issue would just go to die). 

The people I ended up trusting more were not always members of my "tribe." In fact, I felt quite a bit of shame and would keep quiet about my decision because I knew I was one of the only ones. I did consult with a trusted Christian MD/MPH who is also an epidemiologist and a man of integrity, as well as a level-headed Catholic buddy whom I had back-and-forths with over the phone. He, too, was getting confused and somewhat disgusted with the knee-jerk misinformation that seemed to be polluting our ability to make informed choices with solid data. 

All that being said, I did not make any kind of admirable choice, or "did it for the sake of others, the loving option." I know full well I conceded, in a way, in what I felt was a roll of the dice. I experienced no side effects. I guess time will tell if I will "die within two years." My rationale, right or wrong, was to place myself on a kind of pseudo-trial, being asked the simple question: "Why did you decide to refuse the shot?" (which is what I initially wanted to do) and realized my reasons and testimony were not convincing, to me at least, and did not feel like they would hold up in court as I couldn't articulate in a convincing way why I would refuse it. 

And yet, the large majority of my friends, and the men in my men's group, have come to a different conclusion, and as a matter of conscience, feel strongly that they do not want to take this vaccine for various reasons. Some are concerned about long term unknown effects, some feel it is too compromised morally as the cell lines were tested with abortion-tainted cells, others just stand on principal and don't feel that the threat of COVID warrants taking it. I can respect all that. That wasn't how things played out for me in my imperfect line of reasoning and decision making. But for them, they came to different conclusions. 

“A man with a conviction is a hard man to change,” Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schacter wrote in When Prophecy Fails, their 1957 book about this study. “Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point … Suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before.

“You spread stories because you know that they’re likely to be a kind of litmus test, and the way people react will show whether they’re prepared to side with you or not,” Boyer says. “Having social support, from an evolutionary standpoint, is far more important than knowing the truth about some facts that do not directly impinge on your life.” The meditation and sense of belonging that Daniel Shaw got from Siddha Yoga, for example, was at one time more important to his life than the alleged misdeeds of the gurus who led the group.

Shaw describes the motivated reasoning that happens in these groups: “You’re in a position of defending your choices no matter what information is presented,” he says, “because if you don’t, it means that you lose your membership in this group that’s become so important to you.” Though cults are an intense example, Shaw says people act the same way with regard to their families or other groups that are important to them.

(The Atlantic, This Article Won't Change Your Mind, 13 Mar 2017)

I have no desire to change anyone's mind about anything except with regards to the moral imperative of Christ for those who do not know him. Even that, I try not to be heavy handed with, but present the 'evidence' of faith (and reason) that warrants belief. In the matters reserved for prudential judgment--whether you drive a F150 or a Prius, whether you are devoted to this or that apparition, whether you eat meat or don't, etc--I try to respect the freedom we have as children of God to "love, and do what you will" (St. Augustine).

But this vax thing is tough, tiring, and contentious. I know for a fact I don't have all the answers. I also know I love my friends. But I am not afraid to follow in a different way on matters of conscience, as long as it is not sin, because ultimately I do not have to give an account to them--I must give account to Christ. 

I try to remember that Peter and Paul (both saints) almost came to blows over certain matters in the early Church. Yet they loved with a fraternal love each other, and loved Christ above all. I pray for their intercession in navigating these confusing times, when we all need our tribes...but not at the expense of being true to ourselves in conscience. We can sometimes do things to stay in other people's good graces, even when it goes against that still small voice inside of us that shouldn't be so swayed. 

The need to belong, the desire to belong, is so strong, I think we underestimate it sometimes. Rejection packs a hell of a sting. But tribal belonging is not what we were made for; it's simply a nice byproduct. We were made to know God, to love Him, and to do His will...in this world, and the next. 

You Shall Not Die The Death

After a week of detox from nicotine, I think I'm beginning to round a corner and at three am, felt ready and able to write again. Thanks for bearing with me. 

It's been an incredibly hard week, physically and psychologically, and I found taking that break to focus on, well, surviving it, was a good reset. I couldn't write even if I wanted to--I felt like I was in a fog and my brain was re-calibrating to find a new equilibrium sans nicotine dependency. Someone who had also quit years ago wrote to me as I was going through it that it can take a week to deplete your brain's nicotine receptors--but that it only takes two puffs from a cigarette to re-saturate them. That was high stakes and sobering. Because I really don't want to have to go through this week again if I can help it.

If anything could be gleaned from this special hell week, though, it's the gift of knowing a lie. 

Our whole history as fallen man starts in the Garden with a lie that we didn't recognize, the consequence of which we are still working to reconcile today. The serpent in the garden told Eve "you shall not die the death" were she to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil which she was commanded not to eat from. She eats it and endures the very banishment and death the serpent promised she would not have to endure.  

The lie I was faced with this past week wasn't "You shall not die," but rather "You will die (without x)". In other words, persisting in extrication from something I had grown so dependent on felt like a terror, because I had been conditioned for so long to believe that I could not actually live without nicotine. Like anyone who has lived through suicidal ideation, you have to almost cling to a kind of blind faith that you will in fact continue to exist in spite of the feeling that you cannot continue to bear to live in the current suffering, and that it will not be forever. It's made harder by what I referenced earlier--in the case of nicotine, two hits and all this suffering can go away, and you can return to a comfortable slavery. But I didn't want to go back. Sometimes avoiding our crosses brings us more suffering than picking them up. Even though it felt like I was going to at times, I didn't die. I didn't need nicotine either. It was all a bald-faced flipping lie. 

What else was I being lied to about? Having deleted my Facebook account in disgust back in January at the weaponized envy and leveraged vanity I was engaging and being engaged in, I knew (but only in retrospect, after a similar detox) that the social media bullshit machine is, indeed, "risky behavior" as one analyst put it. I believed the lies that people on my friends list cared about me or were there for me in times of need in any meaningful way, when really that number could be counted on one or two hands. I believed the lie that I needed to know everything that was happening in the world and the Church or risk being existentially 'lost in space' where no one knows I exist anymore. 

I got caught up in a lot of misinformation and tribalism and outrage culture that seems to be a feature, not a bug, of the social media matrix. I couldn't deactivate or simply not use the app; it was too pernicious, so personally I had to cut ship altogether and delete my account. But I have seen people take extended breaks and then come back with a vengeance engaging in the same bullshit that led them to take the break in the first place. I don't know if they missed the attention or the false sense of connection with other isolated moms or the self-reinforcing pavlovian like-share generation, but it can be a tough drug to kick. If anybody asked me my opinion, I would tell them it's a bloody plague and get off as soon as you can unless you like being hooked up to the Matrix or you enjoy fooling yourself into thinking your too important to live without it.

One of the nice byproducts of eliminating this has been how living the present moments and the investment in the local have really increased as a result. I didn't need social media to live my life; it was a lie that told me I couldn't live without it, or if I could, that life wouldn't be worth it due to such a loss. What happened instead is our on-the-ground friendships deepened and we started doing more--hosting events at our home, having dinners at other people's homes, getting families together more and putting out energies into building up that Catholic fellowship not in a "virtual" or "online" sense (faux-community) but in real life. I became more present to my family. I was able to weed out the people who really do care about me from those who wouldn't notice if something happened to me. 

One unfortunate byproduct of the age we are living in is I don't believe anyone or anything anymore. Everything is camped up to be a false dichotomy, whether it's politics or masks or covid or vaccines or Tradition or whathaveyou, and everyone is a self-appointed expert. And the people who dig in like bulldogs and refuse to be corrected if they were wrong is only exasperated by having to have a public opinion about every damn thing so that you can be herded into Camp A or Camp B. It's actually a rare thing for someone to have the grace and humility to admit error, but I always appreciate it when I see it; tribalism has a way of keeping us in our camps though. 

I've written about all this stuff before. But like I said, opening your eyes after thinking and feeling like you're going to die and that you can't live like this is really, idk...empowering. You wake up and realize, 'hey I didn't die. God preserved my life. And in fact, I feel pretty damn good.' Like, what other lies have I been believing that have kept me chained for years, things I was told I couldn't live without? 

Do We Need "Group Identity" in Catholicism?

 Catholicism is a "big tent" religion--there is a lot of diversity within it across the spectrum. Like any major organization, you have your sub-groups within the corporate structure--charismatics, traditionalists, cultural Catholics. You have Hispanic Catholics, Black Catholics, Eastern-Rite Catholics...I could go on and on. 

But to what extent does this matter? In high school, I floated from group to group--I hung out with the athletes, the Phish-heads, the theater kids. I went stag to my prom, and had a lot of fun despite my intentional lack of a date. I guess I just didn't want to be locked into a particular clique or group. I've always been kind of wary of group-think. I think there's something to be learned from everyone, however small. 

But some people really do find comfort in belonging, in finding their tribe. There's nothing wrong with that. We tend to gravitate towards people and friendships with like-minded people who share similar values. We've been to a few Hispanic masses, and like many European communities at the turn of the 20th century, they are a bit of an enclave. The section of Philadelphia I lived in you could throw a stone and hit the "German" church, the "Italian" church, and the "Polish" church standing in one spot. (William Cavanaugh has an interesting essay which I read in grad school about the concept of the nation-state, access here.)

Of course, it isn't like that today. Though these churches were built by immigrant enclaves who stuck to their own communities, our parishes today are not so much split by ethnic lines. It seems like something from a bygone era. So, to what extent do we really need a kind of group identity in our faith?

There seems to be more tribalism on-line than in person, whether that's in the Crisis combox or on social media. Maybe the low initial investment and buy in for people online lends itself to this kind of virtual sifting into groups. Are you a James Martin Catholic, or a Taylor Marshall Catholic? There's no secret handshake, but one learns what ideological lines to keep within. 

One of the hard parts about not fitting squarely in one box or another, for me at least, is that it can be hard to get published outside of small spheres. If an editor isn't sure 'where you stand' and how they can sell/pitch your work, they are being forced to take a risk that might blow back in their face. We saw how Simcha Fisher and Mark Shea were booted from the Register a few years back (personally, I think Simcha is a gifted writer, but I don't read what she has to say, at least not anymore), as well as the rifts between people like Taylor Marshall and Tim Gordon. 

It can be a confusing field to navigate for new Catholics who may not know all the lingo yet or who stands for what, kind of like being the new kid at school in the cafeteria. But new Catholics have the grace of being babies in the faith, and there is an innocence and purity in babies, which is why they are so cute. Sooner or later, though, we all tend to gravitate towards one group or another. I guess it's inevitable.

Maybe this group identity among Catholics isn't a real thing, though. Maybe it doesn't have to be this way. When we shut off our minds to different ways of thinking, we can find ourselves in echo chambers that aren't always healthy. Growth comes from ripping your muscles and rebuilding them, not being comfortably flaccid. But one has to be on solid ground themselves to do so, I think, and comfortable in their own skin. "Don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out," as Chesterton said. 

It can be a hard thing when do inadvertently or consciously step out of the drawn lines, though, and find your "tribe" turned against you in Mean Girls fashion; being anathema is no fun for anyone. To the extent people lose their faith over their treatment at the hands of other Catholics, it is lamentable. 

I like what St. Paul said when he wrote, "I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I may save some" (1 Cor 9:22). The Apostle to the Gentiles seemed to possess an adaptability that fortified his mission. When he was hungry, he was content. When he was fed, he was content. When he was in prison, he was content. When he was preaching freely, he was content. He possessed an inner-freedom not dependent on circumstances. And yet, even then he wrote to different Christian communities separated by their standing as Jews or Gentiles, national boundaries, and citizenship. He was adaptable. We have many epistles because Paul was writing to different audiences. 

So maybe this 'group identity' with Catholicism is a thing, and always will be. Maybe it's human nature to want to belong. To the extent that groups devour their own, though, that healthy cohesion seems to be lost. 

I'm not much bothered being a more-or-less "free-agent" as a Catholic and not belonging to one group or another. I value my freedom--that freedom in Christ--to have a little of that spirit of St. Paul to be "all things to all men." I also recognize it's limitations (ie, being published outside a small sphere, as I mentioned). It's a trade-off I'm ok with. Do we need group identity in Catholicism? Maybe, maybe not. But as long as we are one in Christ, and keep that our focus, I think we have a better chance of surviving by not eating our own.

Extra Catholica: A Quick and Dirty Post

As mask mandates at the state level begin to wind down, we seem to be faced with yet another extra-Catholica point of contention occupying many Catholics' conscience which actually does have a (remote?) moral dimension: to vaccinate or not to vaccinate. 

Again, the degeneration of the point at hand into caricatures is lamentable: Are all those who choose to "take the jab" for whatever reason "scaredy-cat Catholics living in fear of a virus with a 99% survival rate?" Are those who choose to forgo it "staunch Anti-vaxxer" conspirators either opposed to or suspicious of big pharma and the New World Order? 

I have friends and fellow Catholics on both sides of the aisle here. Being neither competent in bioethics or moral theology, I'll reiterate something I wrote in "Navigating the Catholic Culture War" when masking was the the issue du jour just a few months ago:

"Somewhere along the line, the whole COVID anti-masking thing became conflated with traditionalism, and the social media conjecturing became for some a parrot of leftist virtue signaling (posting photos in masks, photos of one getting the vaccine, etc). Which gets a little confusing I imagine if your in that Venn-intersection of points. Most of the traditionalists I know are also staunchly against masking as a matter of principal. It would be strange, really, at least in my sphere, if someone was adamantly pro-mask and a traditional Catholic, kind of like a non-sequitur. This may tie in with the idea of a globalist New World Order in which mandatory masking is part of the overall global agenda to vaccinate and depopulate, and that to participate in it makes one complicit in ultimately undermining liberty and personal autonomy.

Once again, I find myself just right of center on the issue: I reluctantly mask when I have to (though using it as a chin cup whenever I can) because I think they are disgusting and for the most part ineffective, and never really for extended periods of time thankfully. I hate that I can't see people's smiles or expressions. Am I willing to go to jail over it? Probably not. Call me unprincipled. 

But does it undermine my Catholicism? Not that I was ever in da club the first place, but does traditionalism extend beyond the liturgy into these peripheral spheres, I wonder. Does one gain something from a traditionalist's standpoint for not wearing a mask or choosing not to get vaccinated? Or if something the Pope does is given a sympathetic gesture, does it undermine their street-cred? Is traditionalism about traditional worship and living out the virtues, or the principled peripheral items that determine one's standing? How does one make these determinations for themselves, and what if they come to a conclusion that goes against these cultural norms?" 

If I had to slam a nail down on the issue at hand swirling around in these distractions, I would say the role of the conscience begins to rise to the surface so that it should at least be brought up. John Henry Cardinal Newman is probably my favorite saint to explore this existential praxis:

"Conscience is a law of the mind; yet [Christians] would not grant that it is nothing more; I mean that it was not a dictate, nor conveyed the notion of responsibility, of duty, of a threat and a promise.... [Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ."   

--"Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," V, in Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching II (London: Longmans Green, 1885), 248.

The queer thing about conscience is that the end choice of a moral wrestling may emerge in a different guise in one person than it does in another. This is not the justifying of things always contra to the moral law (apostasy, fornication, birth control, etc), but to the degree we have the moral freedom to "love and do what thou will" as St. Augustine said, one person's apparent 'sin' in things extra Catholica is another's clear conscience, while simultaneously not being in contradiction to the moral law.

I think Paul's words to the Corinthians in 1 Cor 8 is worth mulling over a bit here:

"Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up. Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. But whoever loves God is known by God.

"So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.

But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do.

Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols? So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge. When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall."

But food does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do. Good "food" for thought here (pun intended)

This is the 'extra catholica' I refer to in the modern context. And as I often, at least try, to do, I want to hold up a mirror: for the staunch and faithful Catholics whose conscience compels them to forgo the jab, resist masks, and any additional accouterments that attach themselves to those convictions--how are you regarding your brother in Christ who does not? 

Dig deep. Do you harbor contempt and/or judgment? Do you presume his reasons for doing so ("He must be scared. He's a blind sheeple. He's weak-willed.") Do you will his good, even if it looks different than what you have determined to be the good? Do you paint in broad strokes? Do you dismiss their words? Do you speak ill of them? Condemn them? 

If you don't, I give you credit--you are doing better than I am. It is alarmingly easy to suddenly become the grimacing old woman in the pew scowling at the ill-behaved children, the lack of a veil, the communion-in-the-hand-receiving parishioner. And lest you think this has no moral consequence, remember our Lord's words:

"For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged" (Mt 7:2)

I want to spare the scrupulous, for they do not need extra helpings of condemnation. So maybe it would be more beneficial to think of it in terms of energy, to which I turn to the erudite and simple-hearted St. Teresa of Calcutta:

 "If you judge people, you have no time to love them." 

This is what I see as the unfortunate waste of extra-Catholica issues: it's not that the issue at hand is not important or has not moral dimension, but that it siphons off what we need to do what is at the heart of the Christian life, and that is to love. I'd like to say it better than Mother, but I can't. Even in writing this post, it's not to condemn or lament, but to remind. I'm not your judge or arbiter, but sometimes we just need someone to hold up a mirror which is really all I see my role as. 

In the inner sanctuary of the conscience, we stand alone before God--we do not answer to each other, to our fellow parishioners, or even the Pope. This is the existential dimension of the Christian: to make the choices--even in seemingly peripheral matters that DO MATTER--and take radical responsibility for them. The Christian life is not completely objective (it is always a sin to 'x') and not completely subjective (it is never a sin when I 'y'), but a pivoting and discerning dance between these two dimensions. Can we judge actions and sin--of course. And not only that, we are called to. Thankfully we have the moral law to make those determinations objectively, to speak the truth in love. But it is the subjective dimension--the choices of others--that may take a little more digging, a little more prudent discernment.

I don't know about you, but my energy is in short supply these days. Last year, I was completely over-extended, partly because I did not guard it as carefully for the things that mattered. I learned a hard lesson from that--to focus on the fundamental things--my faith, my family, my prayer life, my responsibilities--and not have things siphon off from what was important. Judgement, worry and anxiety, anger--these are the things in our spiritual lives which siphon off from the source the very things we need to be careful to preserve. Which is why these extra catholica issues, for me at least, have become wearisome and distracting. I love less and less effectively to the degree with which I am judging my brother. I know this, for myself, to be true. We all have to bear the judgment for our actions and moral choices when we stand alone before God, and bear account of every idle word spoken. 

For me, it's a sobering thought. Maybe it is for you too? 

Navigating The Catholic Culture War

 There are two things I appreciate about our informal Catholic men's group we formed a few years ago: it developed organically and is not an Official Parish Program (TM) or tied to a particular parish; we meet In Real Life for prayer, service, and fellowship, and have no real online component except for an email listserv. 

Because the men (ranging in age from early thirties to mid-forties) run the spectrum--from slightly more progressively-minded to more conservative, and from charismatic to traditionalist--we have a healthy mix of perspectives and viewpoints. Some of us attend the Latin Mass, while others do not. Some of the guys are on Facebook, others are not. But the meat and potatoes of our existence is in person. We get together for a weekly early morning Lectio Divina, have lent muscle to the local Little Sisters of the Poor in clearing downed trees, and during this Holy Week, met at a church for midnight prayer on Good Friday.

The more I contrast this with my past experience on social media, the more appreciative I am that we are not tied or bound by such a medium. We are able to exist together, in part, because we don't cancel or attack each other, even if there are things we may not agree on. There's a healthy respect, kind of the way you don't get too deep into anything with your next door neighbor, because if it goes south...well, you still have to live next to them. 

When I contrast this with the tunnel-vision one acquires online, where one can cut ties with little sense of loss, it's that these IRL relationships are more forgiving, with some 'bend' so as not to break; kind of the way an expansion tank on your hot water heater serves to absorb and release some of the pressure so the main tank doesn't blow up. I've found myself interacting and becoming close friends with guys who didn't vote for Trump, who may be more COVID-cautious, who aren't traditionally-minded when it comes to liturgy, and who may be more sympathetic to Pope Francis than I am. And they are all good, solid guys. It feels...I don't know...healthy to have the opportunity to have this kind of cross-section of Catholicism, as long as we can agree on the fundamentals. All of us "belong" in this group in the sense that we are men, and we are Catholic.

Though our family attends the Traditional Latin Mass exclusively, I would not consider myself a traditionalist. Maybe trad-sympathetic is more fitting, if we are doing labels. I will generally avoid going to the Ordinary Form unless I have no other option, but I would not necessarily walk out in protest if it was in fact my only option. I don't think Vatican II led to the kind of renewal it envisioned, but I don't write it off as an invalid council either. I don't really listen to much of what Pope Francis has to say in the news, but I try very hard not to disparage either out of respect for the Chair. Honestly, I don't know what the technical qualifications would be to be considered a traditionalist in the formal sense, and I'm probably not one anyway because I haven't cared enough to find out.

Somewhere along the line, the whole COVID anti-masking thing became conflated with traditionalism, and the social media conjecturing became for some a parrot of leftist virtue signaling (posting photos in masks, photos of one getting the vaccine, etc). Which gets a little confusing I imagine if your in that Venn-intersection of points. Most of the traditionalists I know are also staunchly against masking as a matter of principal. It would be strange, really, at least in my sphere, if someone was adamantly pro-mask and a traditional Catholic, kind of like a non-sequitur. This may tie in with the idea of a globalist New World Order in which mandatory masking is part of the overall global agenda to vaccinate and depopulate, and that to participate in it makes one complicit in ultimately undermining liberty and personal autonomy.

Once again, I find myself just right of center on the issue: I reluctantly mask when I have to (though using it as a chin cup whenever I can) because I think they are disgusting and for the most part ineffective, and never really for extended periods of time thankfully. I hate that I can't see people's smiles or expressions. Am I willing to go to jail over it? Probably not. Call me unprincipled. 

But does it undermine my Catholicism? Not that I was ever in da club the first place, but does traditionalism extend beyond the liturgy into these peripheral spheres, I wonder. Does one gain something from a traditionalist's standpoint for not wearing a mask or choosing not to get vaccinated? Or if something the Pope does is given a sympathetic gesture, does it undermine their street-cred? Is traditionalism about traditional worship and living out the virtues, or the principled peripheral items that determine one's standing? How does one make these determinations for themselves, and what if they come to a conclusion that goes against these cultural norms? 

The people I know in real life, whether traditionalists or otherwise, bless me with a lot of grace and bend. One of the nice things about IRL is that we don't live by caricatures or quick denigration, but through respect, boundaries, and nuance. I can be of a different mind on a host of topics and still be able to have a comfortable drink together, and even some spirited debate when warranted. 

What I do have sympathies for, is new traditionally minded Catholics who may not want to or be prepared to navigate all these peripheral issues of masks and which-bishops-are-the-good-ones and politics. What they may simply want, is Jesus and the One True Faith. As in the Mystery of the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple, all that matters in the moment is WE HAVE TO FIND JESUS. 

I had the privilege of witnessing a 26 year old young man come into the Church by way of the TLM last week. The relief and sense of gratitude for finding that lost coin upon returning to his pew after being confirmed took me back to that Beginner's Heart attitude that can get lost in this kind of stupid Catholic Culture war--who is or isn't trad enough, who is a heretic, who needs to be canceled or put in their place or enlightened with a barrage of articles and websites. One of the nice things now is that we can plug him into some community with our IRL men's group, hopefully, to walk with him in his faith and support him.

My wife and I will be hosting a large gathering at our home for every Catholic family of every stripe that we know next month. We wanted to give the opportunity to have these kind of things--cross-sections of otherwise disconnected local Catholic families across parishes to meet each other and have some good food and company to know they're not alone and completely on their own--whether their pro-mask or anti-mask, traditionalist of Novus Ordo, liberal or conservative. I'd ask for your prayers for good weather, since there will be almost a hundred people with kids and we'll be outside in our backyard. It should be a fun example of Venn Diagram Catholicism at it's finest!

The Dangers of the TLM Fight Club

I'm not a film buff, per se, but I do like movies that make you think outside the box. I can't always recommend them in good conscience, but at one point I was willing to look past the undesirable and objectionable parts if it was unique. Films like The Matrix, Kill Bill, Constantine, I Heart Huckabees--at least they got me thinking. Again, I can't recommend any of them because of their content, as I don't think the positives outweigh the potential negatives, but I'll give them credit for being unique. 

Fight Club was in this kind of cult category. I saw it maybe twenty years ago (I'm a huge Brad Pitt and Edward Norton fan as well). It's a hard movie to give a synopsis for but I'll try: The unnamed Narrator (Edward Norton) leads a life of emasculated, quiet desperation as a cog in the corporate wheel (essentially "a consumer," as he seeks to describe his existence and evidenced by his obsession with "completion" by way of his IKEA-manicured condo and soul-sucking business trips replete with "single serving" encounters). He's basically alive, but dead inside, not to mention suffering from insomnia.

The Narrator's alter-ego--the confident, virile, and violent hyper-masculine Tyler Durden--is everything the narrator is not. The Narrator likes control--Tyler tells him to "stop trying to control everything." He teaches him "rock bottom" lessons (like letting go of the steering wheel in the car and stepping on the gas, I presume to show him you can survive more than you think you can after they barrel roll over a median, blowing up the Narrator's condo (detachment) and pouring lye on his hands as a kind of pain-tolerance test).

Fight Club is the kind-of secret, underground after-hours movement that develops as a way for other emasculated men to come together and get out their repressed aggression--bare-knuckled fighting in basements. For the first time, they feel alive. This would be one thing, but Tyler sees it as a movement to free men from the drudgery of consumerism and founds Project Mayhem, a kind of domestic terror group spring from Fight Club with the ultimate goal of dismantling capitalism by blowing up the credit card companies. The movement grows; recruits stand outside the dilapidated mansion, which serves as home base in the sketchy outskirts of the city, without food or water and subject to hazing for three days to prove their meddle. Tyler becomes a kind of charismatic, fascist dictator in the process of taking things, well, a little too far. 

What does any of this have to do with the Traditional Latin Mass and the growing movement towards traditionalism in the Church, especially among young men? 

I'll grant that it might be an unorthodox way of developing parallelism, but I see a couple of cautionary points worth considering, if you're willing to think outside the box a little.

One: The post-conciliar Church is largely feminized and emasculated. This was my experience in the Novus Ordo, one I couldn't put my finger on for a long time. You can cite female lectors and EMs or overbearing Music Directors, or a ceding of paternal control to a largely female lay parish committee, or the hymns or the hand holding...the list goes on. What it boils down to is that, from my observations, the N.O. does not appeal to male sensibilities. 

Two: The vacuum will be filled one way or another. Either people leave the Church, with men leading the way out, or they will be brought back in by what appeals to those primal sensibilities. The rise of figures like Jordan Peterson and Fr. Ripperger are mobilizers in a way, to bring things back into right order and out of the chaos of the rubble when the Natural Law has been eschewed and inverted for decades.

At the TLM, the focus is not anthropocentric, but theocentric. The physicality and precision with which the sacrifice (the immolation of the Lamb, not a 'shared meal') is offered has a kind of military precision to it. It is unapologetic and uncompromising. In essence: it's not about you. And that is, I think, appealing to men. 

Three: It has the potential to go too far, when not tempered by virtue. When I attend monthly holy hour at the FSSP parish near us, fifty or sixty guys are praying the rosary and worshiping Christ. We gather in the basement afterwards for wings and beer, and a talk by the priest. It has a "Fight Club" type feel, without the Fighting. But this is because the priest is a sensible and level-headed shepherd that encourages virtue and discourages fringe-extremism. I think this is important. A charismatic but reckless priest has as much potential to lead men astray (by capitalizing on point #2, above) when his vision of the Church and holiness conflicts with the laws of the Church, prudence, temperance, and the other virtues, and/or ignores human freedom in favor of a kind of cult-like following. 

I have a real aversion to cults and cult-like thinking. I think cultish-traditionalism is as dangerous as hyper-emasculation. Younger men, especially those without temperance, wisdom, or good formation from their fathers, may be more susceptible to extremism. One young man who attended the TLM at our parish (which had nothing to do with our holy priest at the time, who unfortunately passed away from cancer two years ago, or our particular parish), spray-painted DEUS VULT and hurled a molotov cocktail at the local Planned Parenthood in an attempt to burn it down. I don't know what motivated him, but I think this is a unstable kind of zeal when it's not tempered. 

There's a way that men can get together and build one another up--even if it's in underground fashion in church basements in the sketchy part of town--without going completely Fight Club. Right Order=Right Worship, which is why I have hope that the traditionalist movement has potential to renew the Church, as long as it doesn't devolve into something antithetical to true Christian charity and the true nature of Christ as fully man, in all the best ways. We don't need Fight Clubs (nor do you need to watch the movie (please don't))--we need wisdom, prayer, and virtue, as well as priests to guide us without becoming cult-leaders--so that we can step into the roles we are called to as men, husbands, and fathers and lead our domestic churches in the home and renew the Church from the inside out and bottom up.