 Catharine Lamb, by her own admission, is not a scholar, not a journalist, not one who seeks the limelight. What she represents is a refreshing throwback to what it once meant to be Catholic a scant four decades ago. The seventh of ten children, Catharine was raised in a loving Catholic home in a small mountain town. In the 1970's Catharine experienced - like so many other young Catholics during those times - the confusion caused by the post-conciliar Church's relaxation of the absolutes and disciplines of Roman Catholicism following Vatican II. That, coupled with the cultural revolution of the sixties, caused her to leave the Church. During her journey and sojourn into Protestantism in search of something that had meaning, God guided her to finding her husband Mike. Shortly after they had their first child, she was drawn back to the Catholic Church. She explained by recalling what a wise priest once told her, "It's natural to want the best for your child." Like so many with roots in solid Catholic teaching, she plunged into helping others, spending six years in "youth ministry" and general catechesis with all age groups. Besides raising a family, she served on the pastoral council of her parish and was engulfed by many other social ministries common to the Novus Ordo churches.
In 1996, after attending a Marian Conference, she experienced a life-changing conversion and from that point on hungered for the complete truths taught by the Roman Catholic Church. As she put it, "it led me to seek the 'rest of the story' regarding Vatican II and the compromised Christianity so popular today." In 2000 she had the blessing to be able to attend the reverent Mass she remembered as a child - the Tridentine Mass. After having sought in vain for any, as Catharine termed it, "edible 'fruit of Vatican II'" she discovered that the only place she could depend on true Roman Catholicism as she was taught as a child, the only place the Faith was alive and well, was in the Traditional movement. She described her first Latin Mass since her childhood as a true epiphany: "This unforgettable experience turned my world upside down as I knew I could never return wholeheartedly to the New Order of the Mass." A song that was popular with her grandparents, 'How're you going to keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paree!?' sums up the feeling so many have in rediscovering the True Roman Rite of the Mass. While Catharine and her family have found the heights with the Traditional Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, they're very content to remain on the farm, living in a safe, rural community where they run a small family business. Each week Catharine will bring to readers the simple, but priceless insight of a mother and wife, of someone who has traveled the route of so many during the past 40 years and found the way out of the desert - a desert where so many still wander and wonder in today as the false Church formed from the seeds of Vatican II implodes. As this shaky 40-year foundation gets blown by the shifting sands of compromise, ecumenism and humanism Catharine hopes she can help guide more to the oasis of Truth and Tradition that are not mirages, but the solid rock of Roman Catholicism. Typical of a loving mother, taking her cue from the greatest of mothers - the Blessed Virgin Mary, Catherine imparts the wisdom that, "despite the battle for truth, I encourage all Catholics of whatever persuasion to remain close to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through it all and, in so doing, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. 'Lord Jesus Christ, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.'"
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