Traddyland Forum

How the SSPX formation trades truth and charity for tribal loyalty—and why I will not answer in kind

By Lou Massett

The Godfather line came into my head the moment I realized the "anonymous review" on Traddyland.com was most likely written by my very own brother.

Michael Corleone, in one of the final scenes of the second film, has just discovered that his older brother Fredo betrayed him to the family’s enemies. Not from cruelty. From weakness. From the small, wounded envy of a middle brother who never quite made it. Michael takes Fredo’s face in his hands, quietly, and speaks the seven words the American culture has been quoting ever since.

Here is the hostile review of Traddyland was posted under the pseudonym “Kansas Dude.”

Lou Massett’s Traddyland positions itself as a memoir of personal struggle, but much of the book reads less like truth and more like a collection of distortions. Massett has always seen events through a lens very different from most people, and that tendency shows throughout the narrative. Instead of offering a grounded account of his past, he often reshapes reality to fit his emotional storyline.

One of the most glaring issues is the way he portrays his father, Tom. Lou claims his father served in the army — a statement that is simply false. He also labels his father a “bullshitter,” a characterization that feels deeply unfair to anyone who knows Tom as an honorable, straightforward man. These misrepresentations undermine the credibility of the entire memoir.

Massett’s treatment of other relationships follows the same pattern. His reflections on Molly, the girlfriend who never loved him, are framed as though outside forces…

Hello All,

I wanted to share some thoughts about the latest video that created some buzz recently online...where John Henry Westen had a 40 minute discussion with Father James Altman and then he goes and posted a 4 minute clip where Father calls for the stoning of Pope Leo. This is a public video on his youtube. It has been reported for inciting violence, so we'll see if it's taken down.

This is obviously concerning, that a man with a large following like Westen would want to show his audience a video where he says nothing and just smiles as his guest is calling to stone Pope Leo XIV and to tar and feather him "at the very least".

Some Catholics are outraged about it, and it's because we care about the safety of the Holy Father.

WIth that said, we have some people on the side of the church…

On the salvation the SSPX promised us, and the generation it lost

By Lou Massett

The revolution devours its children.

— Jacques Mallet du Pan, 1793

I put those words at the front of Traddyland because they are what I have watched happen, in my own lifetime, inside the Traditional Catholic revolution I was raised in.

On Taylor Marshall, the SSPX, and 1 Corinthians 13

By Lou Massett

f I speak with the tongues of men, and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And if I should have prophecy and should know all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I should have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

— 1 Corinthians 13:1–2, Douay-Rheims

Dr. Taylor Marshall — the American Catholic apologist, YouTuber, and author of Infiltration — has spent much of the last decade defending the Society of St. Pius X in public. He has interviewed its priests, praised its schools, told his very large audience that the SSPX are the good guys in the story of the twentieth-century Church, and— until this summer.

Fr Gerald Murray is out there trying to get the SSPX a lifeline to say that they're not in schism for those who adhere to the errors that they hold. This is false, because the Pope is the supreme authority in the church, and if he wants their faculties gone and the DDF is acting with his delegated authority, then the SSPX faithful (those who are die hards/3rd order) are all excommunicated and in schism.

-Former Sede, Former SSPXer here

A simple diagnostic to determine where you fall on the ideological spectrum

By Lou Massett

I have been humming that Stealers Wheel lyric on and off for about fifty years. I hummed it especially loudly the year I began to suspect that I was, myself, one of the clowns.

I did not enjoy the discovery. Nobody does. That is why it is worth writing about.

We live in an unusually polarized moment. The temptation to run with the herd — to go with the flow, to sign the petition your friends signed, to repeat the outrage your side is currently outraging over, to nod at the sermon that flatters the pew you sit in — is not a new temptation. It is only louder. Algorithms have industrialized it. Cable news has professionalized it. Half the country genuinely believes the other half is a menace to civilization, and the other half…

The Collateral Damage of Polemics

By Lou Massett

Chicken Little walks into a bar and orders a drink. He hasn't finished his first sip before he's leaning across the counter to tell everyone within earshot that the sky is falling, has been falling for years, and that the bar itself will be next. Pollyanna walks in a moment later, orders a lemonade, and reassures the room that everything is fine — the sky is not falling; it never was; Chicken Little has always been dramatic; look at all the beautiful glassware behind the bar. Socrates walks in last, sits down, and asks a question no one wants to answer: how would either of you know?

I've been thinking about that bar a lot lately.

Last night, I had two conversations I had two back to back conversations that have given me some pause. I want to share them both, becaus…