The Resurrection of the Roman Catholic Church | Griff Ruby

Welcome to The Curated Chapter, a chapter-sized look at books and the people who write them. Today we’ve opened up the book The Resurrection of the Roman Catholic Church: A Guide to the Traditional Catholic Community by Griff Ruby. In it, Mr. Ruby explores the sweeping changes that followed Vatican II — the major Catholic council of the 1960s that reshaped how the Church interacted with the modern world, including changes to the Mass, language, liturgy, and the Church’s relationship with other faiths.

For many Catholics, Vatican II represented renewal and modernization. For others, it marked a dramatic departure from tradition.

That tension sits at the heart of this book.

Now, I’m going to let Mr. Ruby do most of the talking today because this is an intelligent and deeply researched work. But for listeners unfamiliar with the term Vatican II — and honestly, I wasn’t fully clear on it myself before preparing for this episode — that historical context is important here.

According to Griff Ruby, authentic Catholic tradition still survives today in small but faithful communities scattered around the world — including one hidden in the hills above Spokane, Washington that changed the course of his life.

Griff Ruby: “It’s a whole massive hub of the faith up there.    And everything is the old way. Everything’s in the Latin, all the old theology, all the theology works that form the basis of what they teach. And I saw that, I’m in awe. This is incredible. Where has this been all my life? I mean, I know about the church. The church is structured a certain way. And then here’s these communities that, you know, they’re not fitting the usual, what most people think of as the structure. And yet, they clearly have more claim on it. And that was kind of the interesting dichotomy that impressed me. I wanted to know more about this.”

That curiosity formed the basis for this book. And he says it wasn’t just what he found in Spokane that fascinated him. It was why communities like this existed at all.

Why had so many Catholics spent decades searching for older forms of worship, older theology, and older traditions that they believed had largely disappeared from mainstream Catholic life after Vatican II?

And perhaps more importantly — if the Catholic Church is meant to preserve continuity across centuries — how could such dramatic changes happen in the first place?

Answering that question led him into years of research, travel, interviews, and historical study that eventually became this book.

Griff Ruby: “I wanted such a book. It didn’t exist. So then I started getting all these periodicals and publications, books, anything I could find pertaining to this subject. I also started traveling and interviewing different people and so forth. I really talked to a lot of people, learned a lot, picked up all these pieces.”

Like any project that you’re passionate about, if you throw yourself into it deeply enough it can change you.

Griff Ruby: “That changed me from someone who thought this is really neat and interesting only to something where I’m involved. I believe in what these people are doing. It is my life.”

As his research deepened, so did the conclusions he drew from it. And this is where the conversation gets a little controversial. Mr. Ruby argues that the changes that followed Vatican II were not just reforms or modernization efforts, but represented a profound break from historic Catholic continuity — a conclusion some Catholics would strongly disagree with.

Griff Ruby: “This may shock some people. I understand that. That organization that now runs from Vatican City is not legally continuous with the organization that ran from Vatican City from up until Peter took the seat in Rome back in the first century, clear until at least no earlier than the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. So for that span, it’s totally clear what’s going on. The progression is absolutely clear, logical. Not that there can’t be some development and enfleshments of everything, but you see the original doctrine just growing stronger and clearer and so forth over the years. And then suddenly, there’s this Vatican II comes along, and it’s this huge sideways motion. We’re going sideways.”

At the center of his argument is the belief that authentic Catholic tradition has survived not within the modern mainstream Church, but within smaller traditional communities like the one he found in Spokane, Washington.

Communities that preserved the older Latin Mass, older theology, and older forms of worship.

And for Mr. Ruby, this isn’t simply about nostalgia. He believes something much larger is at stake.

Griff Ruby: “They’re not the church anymore. God protects the church. He keeps the church on the straight and narrow. As I demonstrate, in particular, the traditional community, or sometimes I describe it as movement, it has advantages and disadvantages, using that word. That’s where God has actually kept those protections in place. To me, that’s a modern-day miracle that we watch it just continuing and continuing year after year, while the folks there, the Vatican City organization and all the things they took over, they just get crazier and crazier and crazier.”

And by “crazier,” Mr. Ruby is referring to what he sees as a growing theological and moral departure from historic Catholic teaching.

Griff Ruby: “You got Pope saying, well, who am I to judge homosexuality? It’s okay if people shack up and give them the Eucharist anyway. And that was the previous guy they had. And this new guy, it’s already getting some strange things, too. 

So, I mean, it’s like, you know, I’m just trying to tell Catholics, you don’t need to put up with that.”

But for Mr. Ruby, this story is not only theological — it’s also historical. In fact, he says much of the book is history.

Griff Ruby: “First of all, there’s a lot of history that’s happened. And the thing is, most of this is history. I spend the first five chapters and some introductory materials kind of explaining the general situation, introducing the reader to the whys and wherefores of this. This is good stuff. There’s a history here that’s real important and needs to be documented.”

Ruby says the book is ultimately about preservation.

The preservation of tradition.
The preservation of continuity.
And the belief that even in periods of confusion and upheaval, authentic faith can survive with the help of small and faithful communities.

Griff Ruby: “Up until then, we were so under the radar, that’s why nobody had heard of it.”

Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, The Resurrection of the Roman Catholic Church raises questions that reach far beyond Catholicism itself.

How do institutions preserve continuity through times of rapid change?

What happens when believers feel spiritually displaced inside traditions they once trusted?

And how do communities hold onto identity when the modern world seems to be moving in another direction entirely?

For Mr. Ruby, the answers are found in the traditional Catholic movement and the communities he believes preserved something ancient through difficult times.

Griff Ruby: “There are very tough questions and I don’t think anybody’s got all the answers. We’re all struggling, we know what we need to do, even if we’re not totally sure how to explain ourselves. I think that to me is the only thing that unites the traditional Catholics until we have a real pope ready to say, here we are. This is us.”

Near the beginning of the book, Ruby references a line from Canon Francis J. Ripley’s book This is the Faith,    that may best capture both the spirit of the work and the meaning behind its title.

He writes, “[The Church] is the continuance of the work of a divine person; she will never fail simply because Christ can never fail. Her every Calvary will be followed by a fresh Resurrection.”

If you found any of this intriguing, the book is available now online: The Resurrection of the Roman Catholic Church: A Guide to the Traditional Catholic Community by Griff Ruby.

This has been The Curated Chapter with Sam Youmans. Thanks for listening.