Episode 3173: Back to the Truth: A Complete Step-by-Step Journey for Fallen Away Catholics

www.catholic-reboot.com
Nightly Zoom Coordinates for Rosary:
Meeting ID: 865 8978 0399
Passcode: Wjjv4960!
Speak Lord for your Servant is Listening
Book Recommendation of the Day
Saint Lawrence by Eliza Allen Starr
This is a biographical account focusing on the life and martyrdom of St. Lawrence, a trusted deacon under Pope Sixtus II during the Roman persecutions
Back to the Truth: A Complete Step-by-Step Journey for Fallen Away Catholics”
Step 1 – Confront the Truth About Where You Are
“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove yourselves.” — 2 Corinthians 13:5
The first step is radical honesty before God. Without an accurate assessment of your spiritual condition, you will continue to live in illusions.
Most fallen away Catholics believe they are “basically good people” and therefore “fine with God.” But Our Lord warns in Revelation 3:16:
“Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.”
What to do practically:
1. Silence the noise. For one day, limit your phone, music, and TV. This is so you can hear your conscience.
2. Meditate on the Four Last Things
death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Use St. Alphonsus Liguori’s meditations from Preparation for Death.
3. Ask yourself in writing:
o Do I truly believe all the Church teaches?
o Have I knowingly rejected any Church teaching?
o If I died tonight, would I die in a state of grace?
Why this matters: If you don’t acknowledge your separation from God, you will never feel urgency to return.
Step 2 – Reject Modernism and Relativism
Pope St. Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907): “Modernism leads to the annihilation of all religion.”
Modernism is the belief that religious truth changes with time and human experience. Relativism says there is no absolute truth at all. Together, they poison the Catholic mind until faith becomes a “feeling” instead of a conviction.
What to do practically:
1. Purge your sources. Stop following social media accounts, YouTube channels, or authors who contradict Church teaching or treat doctrine as optional.
2. Replace with truth:
o Douay-Rheims Bible with Haydock Commentary.
o Catechism of the Council of Trent.
o Papal encyclicals pre-1962.
3. Train your mind: When you hear a modernist phrase like “the Church must change with the times”—respond mentally with the words of Malachi 3:6: “I am the Lord, and I change not.”
Why this matters: If you keep drinking from poisoned wells, you cannot expect spiritual health. Truth, not feelings, must guide your return.
Step 3 – Return to the Sacraments
“Confess therefore your sins one to another: and pray one for another, that you may be saved.” — James 5:16
No soul returns to God without the Sacraments especially Confession. Our Lord Himself gave priests the power to forgive sins (John 20:22–23), and the early Church Fathers testify to its necessity.
What to do practically:
1. Find a traditional priest (Latin Mass or faithful to perennial teaching). The quality of guidance matters.
2. Prepare thoroughly:
o Use a traditional Examination of Conscience.
o Write down mortal sins in kind and number since your last good confession.
3. Confess humbly and completely: Do not hide or excuse your sins. This is the spiritual surgery that begins your healing.
4. Receive Holy Communion worthily—never in mortal sin, always kneeling and on the tongue if possible.
Why this matters: The state of sanctifying grace is the dividing line between life and death of the soul. The Sacraments restore that life.
Step 4 – Learn the Faith Systematically
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” — Hosea 4:6
Fallen away Catholics often have a “patchwork” of misunderstandings. You cannot live the Faith if you don’t know it in its fullness.
What to do practically:
1. Start with the Baltimore Catechism: Master the first 10 questions before moving on.
2. Advance to the Catechism of the Council of Trent: This explains doctrine, the Commandments, the Sacraments, and prayer.
3. Read one saint’s life weekly: The saints are living proof of Catholic truth in action. Recommended: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John Vianney, St. Pius X.
4. Join a traditional parish catechism class or online study that uses pre-Vatican II materials.
Why this matters: Love follows knowledge. You cannot love Our Lord as He deserves unless you know Him as He truly is.
Step 5 – Live a Life of Daily Prayer
St. Alphonsus Liguori: “He who prays will be saved; he who does not pray will be damned.”
Prayer is the oxygen of the soul. Without it, faith dies whether suddenly or slowly.
What to do practically:
1. Begin each day with a Morning Offering: Give God your prayers, works, joys, and sufferings.
2. Pray the Rosary daily: Our Lady at Fatima said, “Pray the Rosary every day to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war.” It is the chain that binds Satan.
3. Daily spiritual reading: Even 5–10 minutes from the Imitation of Christ or writings of the saints.
4. End each day with an examination of conscience: Thank God for graces, repent of faults, and say an Act of Contrition.
Why this matters: Prayer keeps you in constant contact with Heaven and strengthens you against temptation.
Step 6 – Form a Catholic Worldview
Romans 12:2 – “Be not conformed to this world; but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Catholicism is not just Sunday worship it’s a lens through which you view everything.
What to do practically:
1. Reorder your life: Ask in every decision What would please Christ the King?
2. Sanctify your home: Enthrone the Sacred Heart of Jesus, display holy images, and remove anything immoral.
3. Evaluate entertainment and work: Would I watch this if Our Lady were in the room? Would I do this job if St. Joseph were my boss?
4. Engage in the works of mercy: Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful.
Why this matters: Without a Catholic worldview, faith becomes a “weekend religion” and collapses under cultural pressure.
Step 7 – Persevere in the Face of Opposition
Our Lord: “If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated Me before you.” — John 15:18
A serious return to the Faith will provoke resistance—from friends, family, even fellow Catholics. Expect it.
What to do practically:
1. Choose a patron saint of perseverance: St. Thomas More, St. Athanasius, or St. John Fisher.
2. Stay anchored in community: Connect with faithful Catholics who will encourage you.
3. Offer sufferings for souls: Transform hostility into grace by uniting it with Christ’s Cross.
4. Frequent the Sacraments: Opposition is a sign you’re on the right path don’t retreat.
Why this matters: Perseverance is the final proof of faith. Many begin the journey back but stop at the first sign of difficulty. Heaven is for those who endure to the end.

Closing Exhortation
Friends, the Catholic Faith in its traditional fullness is not merely one option among many it is the one true Faith revealed by God. The steps we’ve outlined are not suggestions; they are the proven path to eternal life.
Do not delay. St. Augustine, after his own long conversion, said: “Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new.” Let those words be yours—but without the “late.”
Epistle Reflection – 1 Corinthians 10:6–14
“These things were done in a figure of us, that we should not covet evil things as they also coveted… Wherefore, my dearly beloved, fly from the service of idols.”
St. Paul warns the Corinthians and us against repeating the sins of Israel: idolatry, immorality, presumption, and ingratitude. His call is not just to avoid sin but to flee from it.
In our age, idolatry is no longer golden calves but golden screens; no longer pagan temples but the worship of self, career, and comfort. The temptation for Catholics today is to think we can compromise a little keep the Faith in private while bending to the culture in public. But St. Paul warns that the danger is not in losing a battle, but in slowly surrendering the war through small concessions.
St. Lawrence shows us the opposite: he refused to hand over the Church’s treasures because he recognized that to do so would betray Christ Himself. We must also refuse to “hand over” the treasures of Tradition Mass, doctrine, devotion to the prefects of our own time who demand we modernize and conform.
Gospel Reflection – Luke 19:41–47
“And when He drew near, seeing the city, He wept over it… saying: If thou also hadst known… the things that are to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes.”
Christ’s lament is followed immediately by His cleansing of the Temple. He moves from tears to righteous anger, casting out those who had turned a house of prayer into a marketplace.
The pattern is clear: compassion for the sinner, but no tolerance for the corruption of sacred things. The modern Church’s reluctance to “overturn tables” has allowed the Temple to become crowded again with irreverence—banal liturgy, casual dress, communion without confession, and even open dissent from doctrine.
Our Lord’s tears were not for the inevitable political collapse of Jerusalem, but for its spiritual blindness. The same blindness afflicts many bishops and priests today, who do not recognize that abandoning reverence for the Eucharist, watering down doctrine, and silencing Tradition is a slow path toward ruin.
St. Lawrence stands here as a counterexample—a man who valued the sacred treasures above his own life. His witness tells us that the right response to corruption in the Temple is not to leave it in silence, but to speak, act, and, if necessary, suffer for the truth.
Saint of the Day – St. Lawrence, Deacon & Martyr
St. Lawrence is one of the most venerated martyrs of the early Church. As Archdeacon of Rome, he was entrusted with the Church’s material goods and care for the poor. When Emperor Valerian’s prefect demanded the Church’s wealth, Lawrence gathered the poor and presented them, declaring: “Behold in these poor persons the treasures which I promised to show you; to which I will add pearls and precious stones, those widows and consecrated virgins, which are the Church’s crown.”
For his holy defiance, he was condemned to be roasted alive. His heroic humor is legendary; tradition records that at one point he said to his executioners, “Turn me over; I am done on this side.”
His martyrdom is a reminder that the Church’s true wealth is not gold or power, but holiness. And that holiness must be defended at all costs—even when it means facing the fire.
Conclusionary Prayer
O glorious St. Lawrence, lover of Christ and defender of His Church, intercede for us in this time of trial. Obtain for us the grace to love the treasures of our Faith more than life itself, to defend the truth with courage, and to serve the poor with joy.
O Lord Jesus, who wept over Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple, we beg Thee to weep over Thy Church today, to cleanse it of all irreverence, error, and worldliness. Raise up saints like Lawrence in our time, that Thy Bride may once again be radiant in holiness.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen