Why performative Catholics don’t show up at the TLM.

Richard Rich wants all the silver cups life has to offer. But you have to know the right people first.

It’s like the conversation between More and Richard Rich, who doesn’t want to be a teacher, in “A Man for All Seasons”, “because nobody will know.”

He’s performative. He wants a job, a vocation, a life that will draw attention and acclaim. Not a life pursuing truth or beauty or goodness for its own sake.

He’s superficial.

He wants to be the Lord Chancellor of England. Like More. Then people will know who he is. The right kind of people. Lots of people. That’s where the action is. It’s monetizable. People will read the blogs, buy the books, open their wallets for you, if you’re known. You’ll be invited to all the right parties. 

More’s answer: “God will know. Your students will know. You will know.”

That’s what separates the men from the boys. When, as More counseled, it’s enough that God knows. When the public gaze, monetization and the obsession with the externals and the superficial take a distant last place in spiritual priorities.

For the worldly, for the performative, the excuse for talking a good game without following through, it’s  always, “but nobody will know.”

For those who seek out the TLM, who turn away from the world together with the priest at Mass,“God will know.”

Horizontal vs vertical. Choose.