You and I must simply follow the Truth relentlessly. And that Truth is Christ, His Catholic Church, and the Faith it teaches—not the modernist imitation unlawfully acting in its name.
2025 has been yet another annus horribilis for faithful Catholics who love Christ and the Traditional Faith as it has been handed down by the Apostles and their successors—until a certain little diabolical “council” that took place in 1962.
The point of this piece is not to recap the year—that would be too depressing—but rather to reflect on one aspect of Catholics’ pursuit of Truth here at what I, and many others, believe is the final stage of Salvation History.
I hope that although this reflection presents a sobering and probably uncomfortable truth, you will nevertheless draw hope and encouragement as we enter 2026.
I will never forget the epiphanic moment in my own conversion journey when my vague, subconscious gravitation toward Catholicism suddenly crystallized into the clear realization that my life and my relationship with God would never be the same.
At that stage, I was essentially a DIY Christian who half-heartedly attended an Anglican church. The reason I landed up with this most-heretical bunch of schismatics was that I could no longer stomach the Pentecostal Protestant sects I grew up with; I yearned for a Christianity with clergy and liturgy. Yet I was still too brainwashed by ideas that the Catholic Church was a cult that worshipped Mary and was run by the Antichrist—the Pope, or some such nonsense—to join Mother Church. Today, I am extremely embarrassed about this.
But I digress.
In February of the year my earnest journey into Catholicism began, my sister invited me on holiday. We set out on a 700 km drive from Johannesburg to the eastern coast of South Africa. Being an obsessive reader, I bought a stack of books to keep me company during the three-week break. One of them was An Idiot’s Guide to Catholicism—a book I bought because I mistakenly expected it to mock the Catholic faith and provide a good laugh. Instead, though no Baltimore Catechism, it was a simple explanation of the basic tenets of Catholicism—and God would have the last laugh.
I started reading the book as we left Johannesburg, and about halfway into the journey I realized I was in trouble:
If what this little book said was true, then as a Christian, I had no choice but to become Catholic.
I spent the rest of the holiday ferociously consuming every Catholic book, podcast, and video I could get my hands on. I promised myself that I would investigate each dogma and doctrine of the Catholic Faith, and that if I found even one that was untrue, I would abandon my discernment and walk away.
That is a story for another time, but needless to say, the rest is history.
Why do I bring up this anecdote, which I am sure I have shared before? To bring you to the point of this essay:
The ever-increasing loneliness of the pursuit of Truth.
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