A review of Louis Massett’s Traddyland: Memoir of a Radical Traditional Catholic.
Compared with other high-demand and fundamentalist religious movements, radical Catholic traditionalism has produced remarkably few memoirs by those who have experienced it from within. The most notable include Patricia Walsh Chadwick’s 2019 Little Sister, recounting her childhood in the 1950s and 1960s among Leonard Feeney’s Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary; Veronica Chater’s 2009 Waiting for the Apocalypse, about her chaotic upbringing in an apocalyptic traditionalist family in the aftermath of Vatican II; and Colleen Dulle’s 2025 Struck Down, Not Destroyed, which describes, among other crises of faith, her attraction to the traditional Latin Mass movement during her university years and the painful circumstances that eventually drove her away from it. Within this small body of literature, there is very little at book length about growing up specifically within the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).[1]
Traddyland: Memoir of a Radical Traditional Catholic by Louis Massett fills that conspicuous gap. This book may represent the beginning of something the Catholic world has not yet produced: a memoir culture among those raised inside radical traditionalism. As the generation that grew up in traditionalism following Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 decree liberalizing the celebration of the Latin Mass comes of age and the ex-traditionalist movement continues to take shape, perhaps we will see more personal accounts of growing up in fundamentalist Catholic groups.
Traddyland is first and foremost a personal memoir, and it does not read like a manifesto against traditionalist Catholicism. It is long, detailed, intelligent, and emotionally vulnerable. In more than 480 pages, Massett carefully reconstructs the story of his life inside the world of the SSPX in the 1980s and 1990s. He traces the formation of his conscience, beginning with his childhood in a traditionalist family and continuing through his adolescent years as a student at St. Mary’s Academy, an SSPX boarding school in St. Marys, Kansas.[2]
That alone would make this an important book. But it arrives at a pivotal moment in the history of the SSPX. On July 1, 2026, the Society — despite multiple Vatican warnings and a personal appeal by Pope Leo XIV — proceeded with episcopal consecrations at Écône without a pontifical mandate. On July 2, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) declared that the bishops principally involved had incurred excommunication. In its accompanying explanatory note, the DDF stated that SSPX clergy are in schism and addressed the resulting invalidity of marriages and confessions celebrated under the Society’s ministry.
Less than two weeks later, the Kansas City Star reported that the Kansas Bureau of Investigation had completed its years-long probe into abuse allegations connected to the SSPX and forwarded its findings to the Kansas Attorney General for charging decisions. So Traddyland appears at a time when both ecclesiastical and civil authorities are confronting the decisions of a group that has long insisted that it alone preserves goodness and truth in contrast to the institutional Church and society at large. Massett’s book helps us understand the culture and beliefs of the SSPX and paints a vivid portrait of life in this small breakaway community at a moment of renewed scrutiny.
A personal story
Massett describes the book on his website as “a memoir of inheritance, fracture, and the cost of escaping religious ideology.” He begins with scenes from his childhood: family rosaries, ordinary Catholic life, the attraction of seriousness, reverence, certainty, and the promise that somewhere amid the postconciliar confusion there remained a community that had preserved the faith intact. It follows his parents’ movement into SSPX life, the building of a chapel community in upstate New York, and then his life as a boarding-school teenager in St. Marys, Kansas — the small midwestern town that serves as the center of SSPX culture in the United States.
The theme of certainty appears early. Reflecting on a childhood attempt to protect three baby chicks that ended in their deaths, Massett writes, “There is a kind of certainty that loves something so much it kills it” (p. 53). The memory becomes a metaphor for the ideology, religious convictions, and insistence on being right that shaped his life.
This memoir is not a simple morality play. Traddyland lingers over the things that made this world compelling: the solemnity of the liturgy, the power of belonging, the appeal of doctrinal confidence, and the sense of participating in something pure and embattled. This makes the eventual unraveling more painful, because the reader can relate to the positive experiences and the true sense of camaraderie, community, and purpose that Massett found in St. Marys. He made real friendships and personal connections with many of the students, teachers, and families connected to St. Mary’s Academy. But Massett also does not shy away from describing the cruelty, corruption, and control that lingered throughout his time with the SSPX.
Throughout the book, Massett highlights some startling episodes: the connections between some SSPX adherents and far-right militia groups, the presence of deeply disturbed men like Richard Williamson and Ramon Angles in leadership roles, and Timothy McVeigh’s attendance at Easter Mass at the SSPX chapel in St. Marys four days before the Oklahoma City bombing. Those details are impossible to ignore, but they are not the entire story.
Because Massett was formed by SSPX schools and priests, figures whose names are now infamous — including Angles and Williamson, as well as Carlos Urrutigoity — played key roles in his youth and adolescence. Massett knew them personally and gives us a ground-level look at how they exercised leadership in the SSPX.
This is what it can mean to be raised in a high-control, fundamentalist religious group: children and vulnerable people are taught from childhood to trust and even revere adults whose motives and judgment may not always deserve that confidence, simply because they profess the same religious and ideological beliefs.
The relevance to today
Readers of Massett’s 2024 Where Peter Is essay, “Much Ado About Traditionalism,” will recognize the “spirit of fear, discord, and division” that took shape through Lefebvre’s movement and continues to animate his spiritual descendants. As a child, Massett absorbed the conviction that Rome had betrayed the faith, that the Church’s hierarchy could not be trusted, and that “Novus Ordo” Catholics were spiritually compromised.
That is why the July 2026 consecrations make Traddyland feel so immediate. The Society’s decision to proceed despite Pope Leo XIV’s personal plea was not just a repeat of 1988, after which Pope St. John Paul II still held out hope for reconciliation between the SSPX and the Catholic Church. In 2026, the rift feels much more decisive, and the Vatican’s response on July 2 — declaring the act schismatic, imposing excommunications, and warning the faithful about the sacramental consequences — has settled the canonical question in the sharpest terms. Looking back at how the SSPX formed its people, exercised authority, and taught them to regard Rome, this outcome now seems inevitable. Massett’s memoir helps us understand why: the rupture of 2026 was not an isolated decision, but the culmination of habits and convictions embedded in the movement from the beginning.
Further, the KBI’s decision to send its SSPX findings to the Kansas Attorney General has drawn renewed attention to allegations of abuse, silence, and cover-up that survivors, former members, and journalists have been raising for years. Massett’s experiences do not prove every later allegation, but they do portray an authoritarian culture in which outside authorities were distrusted, priests were difficult to challenge, and vulnerable people could become profoundly isolated.
The memoir discusses episodes of spiritual and sexual abuse, including a former classmate’s allegation that he was raped by St. Mary’s headmaster, and it depicts a broader culture of secrecy, harsh discipline, clericalism, and fear. Massett shows how abuse becomes possible and how victims become isolated inside communities that have already trained their members to mistrust outside authorities.
A Culture of Control
It is important to note that Massett still cares deeply about the Catholic faith and still holds strongly conservative views. This is a feature, because through his eyes we see what distinguishes radical traditionalism from more mainstream conservative Catholicism: sermons about Freemasons and conspiracies, shunning and spiritual abuse, apocalypticism, and rampant antisemitism.
Extremism, abuse, and high-control dynamics are major threads in the book, and Massett does not flinch from them. He recalls how Holocaust denial and antisemitism were woven casually into sermons and school life. He describes in painful detail the bullying and physical abuse encouraged by the headmaster during his time at the SSPX boarding school in St. Marys. He reflects deeply on the public allegations of sexual abuse and cover-ups that emerged later.
Crucially, he does not spare himself from his part in perpetuating many harmful behaviors during his time with the SSPX, tracing how his desire to belong and to be praised made him complicit in cruelty. Remembering how he turned against a friend who had begun to recognize the headmaster’s destructive behavior, Massett admits, “I blamed everyone except Fr. Angles” (p. 169).
One thing that comes through in this book is unvarnished honesty. Readers will not find a point-by-point theological critique of the SSPX, but they will find a personal story that helps explain why radical traditionalism attracts some Catholics and why it can be so damaging to people and families when combined with conspiracy thinking, clericalism, and a culture that mistakes control for holiness.
The book is long, and its final chapters sometimes move beyond personal memoir into an investigation of radicalization, militia networks, and unresolved questions surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing. Massett is careful to distinguish the established account from the theories he investigates, and he warns readers to weigh the uncertain evidence accordingly. Some readers may find this material less convincing than the firsthand portions of the book. Still, the detour grows out of an honest question at the center of Massett’s story: What happens when religious certainty is cut loose from charity, humility, and communion with the Church?
Near the end of Traddyland, Massett gives his answer: “Faith without charity became a dangerous, clanging cymbal” (p. 495). That is not only the lesson of his experience inside the SSPX. It is also the reason Catholics should read this book now.
Purchase the book: Louis Massett’s Traddyland: Memoir of a Radical Traditional Catholic is available through Amazon in English and Spanish.
Notes
[1] Other noteworthy book-length memoirs about life within radical Catholic traditionalism include My Grandpa, The Pope: From Sedevacantist Sect to the Catholic Church by Tony Mack, who grew up in a small traditionalist cult in the Pacific Northwest of the United States; Reparation: A Spiritual Journey by Maria Hall, a woman from New Zealand who spent nearly a decade as a nun in the Palmarian Church in Spain; and Andrew Mioni’s Altar Against Altar, which — while not technically a memoir — offers a detailed critique of the SSPX from the perspective of someone who grew up in the movement.
[2] The town of St. Marys, Kansas, has no apostrophe in its name, whereas St. Mary’s Academy does.
Image: Louis Massett with St. Mary’s Academy classmates.
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