Something For Everyone Here

A scathing indictment of both "Novus Ordo" and Trad Catholics from Substack:

While your typical mainstream Novus Ordo parish liturgy and culture evinces irreverence, emasculating music, and no sense of the supernatural, feeling less like a ritual sacrifice than a celebration of the community, with hardly any talk of sin (unless it be wokish ones) and the possibility of damnation, and with the “presider” acting like a gay clown and entertainer; your typical TLM-only parish is gloomy, guilt ridden, scrupulous, Calvinist, misogynistic, inner circle, cultish, 4 plus children or be ashamed, reactionary, fear-based, coercive, schismatic, uncharitable, snobby, joyless, judgy, dour, and sad. Priests are impersonal, neurotic, and arrogant, superior to you and needing to be treated that way, with confessions that are abusive, and homilies that are either shaming and guilt-inducing, or just scapegoating cheers for the in-crowd.

Of course, there are parishes, priests, and lay people, both NO and TLM, that evince none of these ideological toxins, but they are the exception. Catholic discourse and subcultures, both “left” and “right”, are becoming more and more ideological. A typical “Trad” now means a neurotic and prideful ideological Pharisee who thinks having 4 or more children (which he makes sure to tell everyone every other day) and treating his wife like a a child-slave makes him superior and gives him a ticket to heaven, and who despises the Novus Ordo and thereby commits the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But the anti-trad discourse and subcultures are just as rotten, making a worldly and godless woke mockery of the Faith. Where are the normal Catholics?

Probably a bit harsh on both sides, to put it mildly. But (among other things) the phenomenon of mentioning your many children at every possible opportunity rings true. To be fair, it's not just Trads, it's JPII Catholics who do this as well. Yes, I realize that it is itself a reaction against an anti-natalist and anti-family culture.

I'm a JPII Catholic, entirely pro-life and pro-family, but I do feel very excluded by this sort of rhetoric. I know, I know, I sound like a liberal. Suck it up and don't be such a snowflake, right? But there it is. Sometimes I break off listening to Catholic YouTube videos because of this, it inhibits me from going to pro-life rallies, and it's one of many reasons I left Facebook. Doubtless it's something I should just "get over".

At the end of the day, I'm grateful for everybody who practices their Faith and strives to be orthodox according to their lights. And I'm always overjoyed to see (and hear) children at Mass.