Top Ten Reasons to be a Home Alone Catholic

G.K. Chesterton wrote concerning his conversion to the Catholic Church: “The difficulty of explaining ‘why I am a Catholic’ is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.” I do not have the same difficulty in explaining the reasons to be a Home Alone Catholic, because there are not ten thousand reasons but only one reason: that Home Alone Catholicism is the only true way to be Catholic today.

And yet there are at least ten—probably ten thousand—consequences or effects of this elephantine truth which may be enumerated to elucidate the principle reason or cause. If there is no bishop in Rome who is the legitimate and actual successor of Saint Peter, as there surely isn’t, and if there are no bishops who have retained the faith and so are truly apostolic, having been appointed by a true Vicar of Christ, as there surely aren’t, and if there are no known priests with legitimate and valid holy orders who have jurisdiction to offer the Sacrifice of the mass publicly and absolve sins in the tribunal of the confessional, as there surely doesn’t appear to be, then the Home Alone position is so very much demonstrable that its denial either arises to the height of stupidity or else sinks to the depths of heresy. I think most who do wage intellectual combat against Home Alone are simply wielding the intellectual equivalent of butter knives. It is not a fair fight when you have the certitude of dogmatic authority and your opponent has mere opinion which turns out to be heresy.

So far then has the truth of the Home Alone position been demonstrated on the pages of this blog, I would like to offer my top ten reasons to be a Home Alone Catholic, which are the consequences of the truth.

10. No More Mass in the Hood

When my family and I realized that the mass of Paul VI—aka the Antichrist—was invalid at best and Satan’s supper at worst, we decided to attend the mass offered by the Institute of Christ the King in St. Louis, which was over two hours away. Though we didn’t realize at the time the multitude of inconsistencies in attending the indult mass, because we were blissfully ignorant of the spiritual dangers of offering a mass una cum—offering the mass in union with the Roman Pontiff—with one we did not believe could be the Roman Pontiff, I recall a Midnight mass where we became frightfully aware of the physical danger of attending mass at midnight in a metropolis.

The mass had concluded and we were sent out into the cold night, and, having nursed a long fast, and feeling quite peckish, we decided to hit the Jack in the Box drive-thru before our flight back to Little Egypt. The line was long, which I suppose one is to suspect when grabbing a bite at midnight in the city which never rests, but my impatience boiled over into extreme restlessness to get my burger and get the hell out of there when I distinctly heard the clear ringing out of at least two small caliber pistol shots not a block or two from the fast food lane I was currently stuck in with my family. I finally rolled up to the barred drive-thru window, and rolled down my car door window, received my food—which was forgettable—and entered the freeway home, leaving the nightmare of attending midnight mass in a metropolis—which was not forgettable—to the past and my memory.

9. Goodbye to Glutenation

I almost do not want to mention this reason because some may misunderstand me, or think I speak irrelevantly about the Blessed Sacrament. Let me just preface my remarks by saying that I would give up all bodily comfort for the chance to partake of my Lord and God sacramentally in the Holy Eucharist again, if I knew that the reception of Him by the hands of the priests available today would be lawful. But, since I think it is not only unlawful but sacrilegious to do so, I cannot help mentioning as a happy consequence of this fact that my family no longer need fear ingesting gluten, which is one of the accidents of the substance of the bread which remains after the miracle of transubstantiation, wherein the substance of the bread—that which it really is—is changed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ.

As we attended the Saint Gertrude the Great Mission, my wife, Laura, being more sensitive to gluten, had already to abstain from sacramental Communion, and offer up a spiritual communion instead, so now we all abstain from sacramental communion and offer up a spiritual communion instead, being most sensitive to sacrilege.

8. Cutting Costs on Clothes

Anyone who has more than the Freemasonic atomic family of four knows that clothing costs are exponentially more the more children one has. This effect is mitigated by the necessary protocol of hand-me-down, but not altogether neutralized, especially with boys who, after wearing a pair of jeans for a month, wear kneecap holes so big mother is obliged either to discard the pants, or hem them so high they become shorts.

As I have six children, the costs of clothing is already about as expensive as a second mortgage, I sure am glad that I do not have to afford a Church wardrobe for the children. That probably would make me have to take out a second mortgage on our home.

Think about it, six children, that’s six pairs of dress shoes every six months, each about 50 dollars on average—I’m talking JC Penny here, not Kmart. Then there’re hats for the ladies, or veils, dress coats and pants, and pretty dresses, the costs of which so far exceed my budget that we would have to dip into the grocery fund and start eating conventional food, i.e., genetically modified, toxically fertilized, pesticide-laden poison, just to pay for it. So I guess this is two for one, since not only do we cut our costs on Church clothes, since we do not need to be so spiffy in our living room offering mass and spiritual communion, we also don’t have to buy the cheaper conventional food. The Great Apostasy is a gift that keeps on giving!

7. Home School, Not Parochial School

It is doubtful that, had we never left the Novus Ordo, or the Sedevacantists, we would have become a classical homeschooling family. The tradition has always been for Catholics to send their children off for instruction at the hands of strangers three-quarters of the waking day, to receive training in the arts and sciences by religious sisters, usually very competent and skilled in doing so. Most of the Novus Ordo has abandoned this practice, and prefers to let laity run their parish schools, but one group of Sedevacantists still carries on the tradition. At QUEEN OF ALL SAINTS ONLINE ACADEMY which, though it has a veneer of being classical, doesn’t even require (so far as I can tell from the website) or even offer courses in either Latin or Greek–peculiar, to say the least, of a supposedly Catholic academy run by traditionalist religious that doesn’t require Latin of its students! We probably would have been tempted to enroll our children into the Sedevacantist academy, and would have never expanded our children’s language horizons beyond two world language credits, probably in Spanish or French.

Now, since we are Home Alone, our children are learning Latin and Greek, in addition to every single subject the Queen of All Saints Online Academy offers, plus some. The bonus boon is that I don’t have to pay for those adorable sweater vests and ties. And, what’s even more awesome, I get to spend more time with my children, and learn with them, and foster bonds with them that will last a lifetime–because they don’t spend three-quarters of the day away from mommy and daddy. Thank God for Home Alone.

6. Local Poor More Well-Off

In the Book of Proverbs we learn that “He that hath mercy on the poor, lendeth to the Lord: and he will repay him.” Now, since we do not tithe to the Novus Ordo churches, nor the Sedevacantists, we have a hefty item to balance on our budget every month, which is allocated to tithing ten percent of our income. Those who can find a worthy–and efficient!–charity which does not have so high an overhead as to make your contributions worthless, great for you! I know of none. But I do know of one charitable way of giving, or tithing your ten percent, which doesn’t have any overhead, usually because the one to whom you give doesn’t have a ceiling, let alone a home. Neither does this entity who stands to benefit from your benevolence require a salaried staff, which often is the sole beneficiary of your tithe. I am speaking, of course, of your local beggar on the street corner with the Sharpie-inscribed cardboard sign pleading with you to fulfill the commandment of God to love your neighbor as yourself. That is your actual neighbor, and not someone in Zimbabwe, who isn’t. As St. Thomas teaches, there is an order of charity which must be observed in performing acts of charity, and in relation to our neighbor, to the degree of his closeness:

“Moreover there is yet another reason for which, out of charity, we love more those who are more nearly connected with us, since we love them in more ways. For, towards those who are not connected with us we have no other friendship than charity, whereas for those who are connected with us, we have certain other friendships, according to the way in which they are connected. Now since the good on which every other friendship of the virtuous is based, is directed, as to its end, to the good on which charity is based, it follows that charity commands each act of another friendship, even as the art which is about the end commands the art which is about the means. Consequently this very act of loving someone because he is akin or connected with us, or because he is a fellow-countryman or for any like reason that is referable to the end of charity, can be commanded by charity, so that, out of charity both eliciting and commanding, we love in more ways those who are more nearly connected with us.”

It follows, then, that to give to our fellow-countryman on the corner is more commanded by charity than to give to a family in a hovel on another continent. So consider giving to your local poor as a way to tithe. I guarantee you, God will not be outdone in generosity.

5. Children’s Choir

When attending mass at some beautiful traditional chapel, one is amazed to hear the beauty of the Catholic musical heritage on display: the pipe organ, with its majestic nuanced tones, powerful as they are subtle, like the breath of angels, or the choir loft, so lofty one cannot even see the singers, but one would have to be tone deaf not to hear the overwhelming beauty of the Gregorian chant and Sacred polyphony. The loss of these are very much regrettable when one has to stay home for mass, and, were I anymore of a heathen, I’d probably give up the position all together, if only to savor the auditory delights of the Missa de Angelis. But, thankfully, that is what Youtube is for.

And yet there is a good which we receive from staying home and not attending mass with the professional choir. We ourselves must learn how to sing. Thankfully, my wife is already naturally talented to sing, and has a beautiful voice and discerning ear, so we already have a cantor to keep the children’s choir in line. There would simply have never been a reason to develop our ears and voices to glorify God had we remained in the pews of the sects, absorbed as we were in the beautiful professional choirs and majestic pipe organ, which, as I have alluded to, may be the last thing keeping people in the pews. Now, we sing a cappella, and hear every voice of the choir, even the little, mousey voices of the youngest. And, though we do not expect to be recording any chant album anytime soon, our choir is intimate and beautiful in its humility, and that pleases us, but, what’s infinitely more important, it delights our Mother Mary and our Father who is in Heaven.

4. Matrimony, the Mother of Souls

It goes without saying perhaps that the domestic Church is indispensable to being a Catholic. I say perhaps, because some people think it is antithetical to Catholicism, but that is just because they aren’t Catholic. Any real Catholic knows that the home is where holiness happens. True, we receive sacramental graces from going to communion, provided we go to ministers of the word and the sacraments who are actually sent to us by the Church, but when that is not possible, there are graces which we receive from praying at home, particularly through the Sacrament of Matrimony, which, the BC teaches, has particular graces:

1028. The effects of the Sacrament of Matrimony are: 
   1. To sanctify the love of husband and wife;
   2. To give them grace to bear with each other’s weaknesses;
   3. To enable them to bring up their children in the fear and love of God.

It is axiomatic that, when one breaks a leg, the other leg becomes stronger. Now, the sacraments may be considered the supports or the legs of the Church, and, when one is not available through the break in apostolic succession, the other sacraments become stronger through an increased dependence upon them. Matrimony is just one such, and my wife and I rely upon the sacramental graces which flow from our Matrimonial union to strengthen us on the most difficult task yet devised by God: the bearing with each other’s weaknesses. Most people, and I do mean most, even among so-called Catholics, simply divorce, and attempt to marry again, I guess with the assumption that their first marriage (and only marriage, since, when once married, always married) broke down on account of matter and not will. Well, being Home Alone, my wife and I depend upon the sacramental graces of Matrimony as if our lives depend upon it, because they do, not only our physical lives but our spiritual and eternal lives depend upon it, as well as our children’s lives, which is the whole point of Matrimony, the raising of our children in the fear and love of the Lord.

3. Isolated from Evil Influences

The world is wicked. Period. Not just the bad actors behind the globalist cabal–probably Luciferian in origin–but also your neighbor across the street, as well as yourself, if you are honest. That is why it is so important to try to control what comes into your home, and what comes into your children’s souls through evil influences, be they from children at school or church. Our children live what many may consider to be very isolated lives. We prefer to call it monastic in body if not in spirit. Being members of worldly associations is not altogether conducive to sanctity, as any monk or cloistered sister would tell you. As the Imitation of Christ teaches:

“What can you find elsewhere that you cannot find here in your [home]? Behold heaven and earth and all the elements, for of these all things are made. What can you see anywhere under the sun that will remain long? Perhaps you think you will completely satisfy yourself, but you cannot do so, for if you should see all existing things, what would they be but an empty vision? 

Raise your eyes to God in heaven and pray because of your sins and shortcomings. Leave vanity to the vain. Set yourself to the things which God has commanded you to do. Close the door upon yourself and call to you Jesus, your Beloved. Remain with Him in your [home], for nowhere else will you find such peace. If you had not left it, and had not listened to idle gossip, you would have remained in greater peace. But since you love, sometimes, to hear news, it is only right that you should suffer sorrow of heart from it.”

Home is where humans and heaven meet. God became Man, and dwelt among us, in a home, in the Holy House of Loreto, which, as pious legend has it, was so holy that the angels where ordered to relocate it from the Holy Land to Loreto, Italy, which stands today as one of the most visited shrines in the country. There He lived isolated from evil influences, safeguarded by Saint Joseph and Mother Mary. Living out the faith at home alone in imitation of the Holy Family–it doesn’t get much more holy than that.

2. Increased Prayer Life

I know that when my family attended the fake mass at the Novus Ordo, we almost never prayed at home, and when we started to attend the Traditional Latin Mass, we prayed the rosary, and when we attended the mass of Sedevacantists, we prayed the Angelus and the Rosary, and some more personal prayers, but only when we decided that the Home Alone position was the only way to keep the faith and the commandments of the Catholic Church, did we start to pray much more:

  • Angelus, 3x daily
  • Rosary
  • Acts of Faith, Hope, Love, and Contrition
  • Consecration to the Sacred Heart daily
  • St. John’s Mass and Spiritual Communion on Holy Days, including every Sunday
  • Confiteor, Mass prayers and parts, etc.

And a handful of other prayers it would be tedious to mention. The point is, being Home Alone, we pray so much more than we ever did, and prayer is a means to attain grace, as the BC teaches:

1117. The fruits of prayer are: 
   1. It strengthens our faith,
   2. nourishes our hope,
   3. increases our love for God,
   4. keeps us humble,
   5. merits grace and atones for sin.

I can attest to the fruits of prayer in my family. Are we perfect? By no means! Do we still have a lot to work on? Absolutely. And yet I wonder how we would be today, had we remained in the Sedevacantist mission, being content with saying our daily Rosary and the few prayers, compared with now, where we pray throughout the day. We who pray at home, pray at home! The whole point of Home Alone Catholicism is being a Catholic at home, which means we are not depending on being a Catholic at church, and praying there, since that option has been taken away from us. And, though the loss of the sacraments and attending mass is harder than I can say, there are benefits from being Home Alone none of our opponents consider. An augmentation of the fruits of prayer is, simply put, an increase in holiness. If we pray more, we become more holy.

1. Home Church

The last reason to be a Home Alone Catholic is the building up of the Home Church. The way in which we do this has already been explained in the preceding nine reasons. We do not go to church because there are no lawful pastors, so we bring the Church home, and build it up through works and prayer, and build it on the Rock of Christ:

Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock. And every one that heareth these my words, and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof, (Matthew 7:24-27).

The Rock of Christ is the rules and articles of the faith, which one may learn from their catechism. There it teaches that we must not go to unlawful ministers who have not been sent to us. It also teaches everything we must know and do in order to save our souls. We can carry on the faith at home, and, as I think I have at least strongly suggested, carry on the faith at our Home Church even better than trying to do so in the Novus Ordo or Sedevacantist churches, and this is so even if they were lawful–which they are not! The Novus Ordo is heretical, and the Sedevacantists are schismatic, which means no one receives graces from their sacraments. Of course, had we be born in a difference age, and not during the Great Apostasy, then living out our faith at home would have been greatly influenced and made more holy by the reception of the sacraments from actual Catholic ministers. We would have had the spiritual benefit of a confessor who could not only absolve us of our sins, but also offer us Catholic counsel, because he had been trained in an actual Catholic seminary, as opposed to whatever you want to call happening down in Florida, were it is deemed near miraculous to have seminarians who have manners. But the necessity to have a Home Church would have been the same, even during normal times. The only difference is, not that Home Church is now indispensable whereas it wasn’t before, that now we can look to nowhere else for grace.

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One thought on “Top Ten Reasons to be a Home Alone Catholic

  1. This article touches on a lot of topics possibly for future articles or discussion.

    Based on the title, I thought these might be more of arguments for the “home alone” position, but I look at them perhaps as advantages that God wants “home aloners” to make use of.

    Sometimes for example I think that I would commute to a church in town for weekly “mass” which might take however many minutes each way. Some of the “trad” chapels, when I’ve lived near them, would demand even longer. Such time can be used for prayer instead (of course people could pray while commuting, I guess). These good things are to be used to make the best of a challenging or different situation; God may will or permissively allow these things to happen, but then allow good to be brought out of the situation as well. So it is lamentable that no mass seems available to go to, but then the time that would have been put to commuting and being at a church can be spent in mass prayers, or other prayers, or some other useful pursuit.

    The other thing I’ll comment is, for me the “home alone” position has always kind of been a misnomer and not how I expected things to be. If there were more people who were “home aloners”, then I just assumed a community would form, like a parish. Or I was close to going out and trying to talk to people to form one for myself, which may still happen. Other people are needed for marriage, mutual support, to pray for one another, and so on. RJMI’s “Mary’s Little Remnant”, while being schismatic and maybe heretical, is “home alone” and kind of what I thought other “home aloners” (who are not of that variety) would be doing. I contacted MHFM (who also has heretical issues) originally to see what their community was up to, assuming they had one – but they are a “monastery” closed off to the public apparently. I think of the Church as being pretty public, so I didn’t think it was just something that exists at “home”. I envisioned some “home alone” groups might start buying old Catholic churches and be praying there, even if mass wasn’t taking place. These kinds of “ambitions” have been sidetracked and whittled down for many reasons, but I still keep them in mind.

    Regarding some of the costs of clothing, I haven’t found any “trad” sites much or at all about some of the costs involved in “traditionalism”. Sometimes traditionalism seems like an unaffordable “lifestyle” for the common working class person. I would wonder what St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans would think, who have an especial dedication to poverty. I saw a blurb I think on ChurchMilitant about how Catholics shouldn’t be investing in companies that promote various sins. So what does that look like in practice, are Catholics not to invest today? Savings accounts at banks often make money from lending at interest, which is thought to be a kind of theft. So are Catholics to avoid those too? Should Catholics send their kids to these non-Catholic colleges so they can get better jobs, while their faith may be endangered? I have seen people lose their faith at such schools. So I think there are perhaps some neglected “practical” questions that could be commented on. I’ve seen some comments or articles here and there, but it’s not collected together. It has made “traditionalism” feel “half-baked” a lot of times. It might be possible to smooth out transitions from certain wrong positions to right ones as well.

    Regarding education, if Vatican 2 hadn’t happened, I’m curious what things would look like. I started to favor the homeschooling approach somewhat independent of religious issues, because so much time was wasted just going back and forth to school, with kids misbehaving, or roll call, various events, and so on. Probably there would be a Catholic trade school and online parochial programs in addition to other things, I think more things might have just naturally developed. Under the present circumstances, it seems like maybe Catholics should organize educational groups with other homeschoolers who aren’t Catholic but may share similar values. I don’t know, this gets in to more of the “practical” problems I encountered when seeing “traditionalism”. No one seems to have produced a “handbook” or “guide” as to how to be Catholic today. A lot of educational materials could be standardized and made freely available online as well today, a bunch of classics are in the public domain. Along with that might be some instruction on how to sing Gregorian chant, and for there to be sheet music made freely available.

    Direct charity to those in need seems to be better than contributing to some of these organizations, so thank you for the people you’ve helped. It’s probably good to have a continued discussion on which organizations, if any, are having an impact and if not then what alternative choices can be made. A homeless person needs a job or business to support themselves, but they may not be able to secure scuh things immediately and that’s where the reliance on charity can be helpful. But such charity if they depend on it entirely can be harmful to their ability to be self-reliant. So it’s good to question again which actions truly help the situation. I’m sure you’re aware of this, I’m just bringing it up as an example.

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