Where Have All The Catholics Gone?

   Now that we are in the season of Advent, I always take some time at the beginning of the ecclesiastical year to meditate on how lucky we are as Traditionalists. This coming Sunday we will celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary; it outranks the Second Sunday of Advent which will be commemorated within the Mass of the Immaculate Conception. The day is one of great joy as we celebrate the unique privilege of the Mother of God who, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, was preserved free from all taint of Original Sin. She is spotless and never committed even the smallest of venial sins. We prepare for the feast by complete fast and abstinence on the Vigil of the feast, December 7th.

 In the Vatican II sect, this Sunday will be the Second Sunday of Advent and the Immaculate Conception will be "transferred" to Monday December 9th, and no member of the Vatican II sect will have to attend the Novus Bogus bread and wine service. (Most don't ever attend anyway). There is no vigil of the feast, so they can continue to eat and drink and be merry as usual, since sin and penance are outdated concepts. This is how the Vatican II sect downgrades the Mother of God, even as their Antipope declares her Rosary "pelagian." Besides having true devotion to Mary (as St. Louis de Monfort would say), we will also have a real Christmas because we still have Christ's Mass. We become one with him in True Holy Communion, receiving Our Lord's very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity under the mere appearance of bread. Those in the Vatican II sect will get a cracker in their hand to chew up and swallow before singing Joy to The World, by the rock group "Three Dog Night."

  This week, I came across an old newspaper clipping someone had sent me as a teenager in 1981. I was 16 and had just converted to the True Faith. The newspaper was old already, having been cut out in 1974. It made a great impression on me, because it showed the Faith of a convert in the 1940s who was lamenting the Modernist takeover of the churches (beginning full force since 1964), and I've kept it all these years. It's a poem written by one Mrs. Caryl Wachuta. She was raised a Protestant, and converted to the True Faith, only to see it taken away by the Modernists in the 1960s. I reproduce it here below. I hope it will inspire you to meditate (1) on what was taken away, (2) on God's goodness that we still have It, (3) and resolve never to forsake It or be lost forever.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE CATHOLICS GONE?

By Caryl Wachuta

When I was at a tender age

Seventeen to be exact

I questioned my religion then

And wondered what it lacked.

I went to Mass with Catholic friends

And much to my surprise

I walked inside this edifice

And felt my spirits rise.

The atmosphere was holy

Sacred music filled the air

Respectful people kneeling

I felt His Presence there.

 

"This is for me," I told myself

And rushed right home to tell

my mother was quite aghast

"You'll surely go to Hell!"

"I hear they worship idols there,"

So little did she know

"I know I can't forbid it,

But I wish you wouldn't go!"

Not wishing to upset her

I knew what I must do

My instructions were in secret

I would be Catholic too

 

With my eighteenth birthday coming

I would be of legal age

To make my own decisions

Against my parents rage

So on the cold and windy night

Of my March 7th natal day

My sponsors drove me to church

And I knelt with them to pray.

And there in secret service

With none to celebrate

I was baptized in the Catholic Church

And in Her put my Faith

 

I went home and told my folks

What I had done that night

Though they were very angry

I knew that I was right.

Eventually I married

And raised five Catholic sons

We sent them all to Catholic School

Where they were taught by nuns

The catholic Church was good to us

And we were happy there

But something now is happening

That makes my heart despair.

 

It started back a few years ago

They said, "Let's modernize!"

"The Church is too old fashioned!"

And so, despite our cries,

They ripped apart the altar

and took the railing down

"Let the stand instead of kneel

And we'll turn the priest around

We'll throw out all the Latin

Using English words instead.

Let the girls wear shorts and trousers

And let them bare their heads!"

 

"What happened to the old respect

We had in Sunday dress

To show the Lord we loved Him?"

I cried out in distress.

"Oh, those were outward trappings,"

They scoffed at my dismay

"Let's make some other changes

May as well go all the way!"

"Let's jazz up all the music

And sing and clap along

And throw out the Virgin Mary

And all the sacred song."

 

As my poor head went spinning

with the changes everyday

I found it so confusing

It was difficult to pray.

Mass used to be uplifting

To my spirits. Now, I find

I dreaded even going

"What new things were on their minds?"

We have a parish council make decisions

they're all "yes-men" you can bet

Who go along with innovations

"You ain't seen nothin' yet!"

 

 

The priests were being overworked

At the only job they had

(They don't grub out a living

For which they should be glad

They needn't work for room and board

To raise a family

On a farm or a factory

Like most of you and me!)

Their only job is to save our souls

And get us all to Heaven

To consecrate the sacred wine

and Holy Bread unleavened

And lift It with their blessed hands

To feed our thirsty souls   

And tend the sick and dying

When Heaven is their goal

 

But they have meetings to attend

And places they must be

Much more important than souls

Of sinners like you an me

They said, "We must have time to go,

We've got to cover ground

So we'll call in some lay people

To pass the bread around

They haven't had their fingers blessed

Or studied to be priests

But that's just another 'trapping'

And can easily be ceased."

 

So after thirty years of Catholic life

I'm right back where I started

More Protestant than Catholic

Disillusioned and broken-hearted.

 

 If the author is still with us, she is now 87 years old. I wish to think that someone like her found the True Faith once more with the Traditionalist Catholics, and will  depart (or has departed) for a better World. She saw through the phony Vatican II sect almost 40 years ago and lamented what was taken away. Her poem should remind us to thank God He gave to us what the Modernists stole from millions of others. Let us remember the ten lepers Our Lord made clean, and be like the one who came back grateful to Christ. Then maybe one day He will say to us in similar words--"Arise, and enter your eternal reward. For thy Faith--the One and Only True Faith which you never took for granted---has indeed saved thee." God bless you, Mrs. Watchuta.