Someone asked me recently, “What was the most surprising thing you learned during your conversion?” I said there were many surprises, of every kind you can imagine, and they were all “good” surprises, meaning that they took something that only kind of made sense and fit it into a picture that makes perfect sense. All the pieces fit now. As a new acquaintance, also a convert (and a reader), described it to me: before, all the science and history and spirituality I was taught would make me go, hm, I don’t really get that, and I would try to understand it and couldn’t, and I would settle for an explanation that didn’t satisfy me; but that’s what I was used to doing so I’d just shrug my shoulders and move on.

For us on the other side, the days of shrugging and moving on are over. Now, we’ll sit and hammer it out, and the aha’s keep rolling in, and there is a pleasant quiet that settles on our souls now, an ability to pray and meditate with focus and love. To give ourselves to God without reservation. Because we have become His people and we have Someone to trust.

But how can we know? Are we perhaps deluded by our emotions? As Catholics we make it a priority to battle our emotions, our passions, our fallen human nature. It was reason that brought many of us here, and it is reason that keeps us here. How can we know? Because God has revealed Himself.

I meet a lot of readers. Some are cradle Catholics, others are people who read their way into the Traditional Catholic church, like myself. Some started as Protestants, some as atheists, Mormons, New Age, agnostic, Vatican II ‘Catholic,’ everything. It’s always the same story, and it’s always a completely different story. “I had no idea.” We all came from a life where we felt isolated in our thinking; we felt like we were the crazy ones, and maybe the only person in the world who thought how we thought. I remember seeing all the propaganda in the media, the endless denigration of family and God and tradition, to where I couldn’t stand movies or TV shows, or social media, or the news. So I stopped watching it. I’d look around and say, “Are you seeing this? Am I the only one?” Now, I can just name a certain show and I get looks of understanding. “I know. We’ve had to be more careful with Disney too.”

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“Having eyes, see you not? and having ears, hear you not? Neither do you remember.” (Mark 8:18)

There is so much to say, I don’t know where to start. I will do my best to use a broad brush here, to give you an idea of the lay of the land. There is no need to bring up anything you can’t already infer from what you know. You can read your way into Catholicism, but you can also just see your way in. Pray for grace. When I prayed for grace, it rolled in, in waves. God’s grace is unlimited, and it multiplies itself like the fishes and the loaves. Just ask, and receive.

Think back on your life, how God has led you by degrees closer to the truth. The first step in this journey is simply this: to desire the truth. To want the truth above all else. To be willing to suffer for it, to sacrifice everything for it. (Start like this: instead of “entertainment” tonight, read an informative book.) This desire for truth—just by itself—is very pleasing to God, and He will satisfy it quickly. Everyone I know who made it, started with this desire. God’s grace begins to work on you beforeyou even realize it. I’ll pray for something, some insight or some grace, and then I’ll look back on my life and realize that he had been preparing me to receive this grace all along. Prayers work retroactively, because God is eternal and all-powerful.

“See you not?”

This is the view from the mountaintop. Let’s not be discouraged—let’s not heckle or argue or, as they say, “get lost in the weeds.” See that silver S, winding its way far off? It’s the river of God’s graces, collecting tributaries, growing, magnifying itself through history, through your life. And that brown muck over there, that flood that we have climbed this mountain to escape, to gain a perspective on, see how vast it is, but also how shallow? It’s extent and power are not what you think. It seems that the devil is everywhere and controls everything, but he is weak, even laughably weak.

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Basically everything you were taught about the history of world, of the universe, of Western civilization, of the modern world—it is all upside-down. Turn it over and you will see not the jumble you were taught in high school or college, but the real portrait of humanity and its struggle against God.

Here’s some books you might try, from easiest to hardest. Seven Lies about Catholic History, by Diane Moczar; How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, by Thomas Woods; Defenders of Christendom, by James Fitzhenry; The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, by Father Denis Fahey; The Occult War, by Leon de Poncins; The War of Antichrist with the Church and Christian Civilization, by Msgr. George Dillon. And this would be dipping your toe in. These focus on concrete facts and primary sources, and are extremely well-referenced. Any one of these books alone overturns half of what I learned in AP European History as a high school student.

What do I mean when I say turned upside down? For one thing, what we call the Dark Ages in modern times, were really the Ages of Light or Illumination. What we call the Ages of Enlightenment or Reason or Rebirth in modern times, were really Dark Ages.

In most ways the Medieval Ages were the high point in Western history. You had the Cathedrals, yes, and you had widespread hospitals and schools and monasteries. You had very little crime, though there were occasional wars. Families were not broken up as they are today—you had a society solidly built, in which authority was respected and—generally speaking—people worked together and valued honesty and integrity over material gain. It was the age of chivalry and heroism and saints—of high ideals. All agriculture was organic. It was what we call today “permaculture” or “sustainable.” There was no widespread media addiction or porn addiction, no mass propaganda, and drug addiction was virtually unknown (though of course you had your occasional sinners and drunkards in the city). Children were actually disciplined, and disciplined well. Most of them learned a trade by the age of 10 or so.

There was—and here we get to the real upshot—very little of what 19^th century philosophers called “decadence.” Art was not about exciting our passions (which were regarded as sinful) but it was primarily religious. Music was 99% Christian, paintings were mostly Christian themed, and most books were about the Church or spirituality. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people, in fact, belonged to the same Christian denomination! Just imagine. To always have an authority on every question pertaining to the Meaning of Life. How could it have been such a utopia? This is how: everyone knew why the existed and what God expected of them.

But no, today’s utter confusion is better, they say. It’s “progress.” What does it mean that we live longer today? What does it mean that we spend our lives chasing money to pay for treatments to prolong our travails in this life, and to make our passing as painless as possible? In the Middles Ages, you were taught to be a spiritual warrior. You were taught that all our suffering, offered up to God, exalts us. Today, you are taught the opposite of this sublime truth, and so we are weaklings who believe that our greatest achievement is to overcome death by artificial means for another decade or two. In the Middle Ages, if there was a plague, they turned to God, threw themselves at his feet, and asked Him to reveal to them their sins so they could make their lives better. In this way every misfortune actually brought more souls into more glory in Heaven. They considered war and disease as punishments and deserved humiliations from God. Today, when people suffer, the blaspheme God, say “I hate my life,” and put their trust in human ingenuity, digging themselves deeper. Pride, do you forget? is the deadliest sin—and we live in the proudest age of all. Physically, perhaps we cheat death more often. But spiritually, we are headed off a cliff. No, I should rather say that, on the whole, we have already tumbled off that cliff and into the abyss.

We live not in an age of progress or peace, but rather in the age of war in the spiritual abyss.

And why is that? Because people are not remembering, nor are they really seeing. Turn off your screen, and look around. Pick up a book, and remember.