Last month, when I asked our supporters to tell us why they read us and support our work, I was overwhelmed by the responses. We got nearly 200 replies, and I wanted to share some more of them with you:
Jeff writes: “When I read 1P5 I get the truth about issues other outlets either ignore or try to gloss over. These are ugly times in our world and in our church and this is no time to be pulling punches. The Church will prevail and Our Beautiful Mother will crush the head of the serpent. It will be a rough road from now until then.”
Markus says: “Thank you wholeheartedly for all your good work! I read your website on a daily basis with great interest. However, most people are still ignorant of what is ongoing. As Catholics we need to speak out and we need encouragement in this troubled world and in this now in many respects misdirected church. Your site and the many comments to the articles provide for that plentifully. Encouragement to fight this war, to not lose hope, to deepen the faith and to continue to increase in love.”
Deborah responds: “I read your website because the authors are informative and thought provoking. The writing is excellent. Much of the original beauty of the Church has been lost or hidden away. Often your articles remind me that beauty is still here and that is very good news.”
John replies: “I donate to 1Peter5 because your site is an important source of news for me. This site keeps me informed on developments within the Catholic Church, the secular assault on our Church, the continuing saga of Archbishop Vigano vs. Theodore McCarrick and those who wish to conceal the truth about the homosexual crisis in the Church, and how we can maintain our faith despite relentless attacks from various bad actors. Keeping me informed on these issues makes me feel obligated to give, so that you may continue the important work you do for us all.”
Elizabeth explains: “I only donated a very small sum of money, because it was all I had, but I did it because I read 1Peter5 every day. I have come to rely on 1P5 to tell the truth about events in the Church, just as they are, without varnish or reinterpretation. Sometimes you and your writers are painfully honest, but I appreciate that. Always I find an underlying confidence that the true Church IS indefectible, that the gates of hell will not prevail. To see things as they are in our time, and not despair requires an extremely firm faith, and I sense you have that. Another reason I read it every day is that I learn so much about the Church’s tradition. I have attended the Latin Mass on Sundays for years, but since following 1P5 I have learned so much more about all of the old rites. I especially love reading Dr. Kwasniewski’s posts. So thank you for what you do. Keep the Faith.”
Helen says: “One Peter 5 is my favorite Catholic blog. Information I found that I find nowhere else. You manage to report with your heart in it. The experience for me is like sitting across the coffee table, talking to you in person. 1P5 is educational, as I said, but never dry. These are only a few reasons why it is my ‘go to’ Catholic site. Keep writing, because you mean so much to so many!”
John writes: “Thank you for the opportunity to tell you why I support 1P5. You and your staff do such great work to help faithful Catholics through this troubling and confusing time in the Church – more accurately, a time of supreme crisis! I know that the mainstream Catholic media cannot be relied upon or trusted to tell the whole truth of what’s going on. That’s why 1P5 is one of several websites that I read because I know that the truth, no matter how bad it is or hard to believe, won’t be ignored, covered up, or defended with poor and flimsy excuses. It also helps to know that people like yourself have made a firm commitment to help others through this terrible time in the Church, not only to expose the rot and corruption, but also to provide articles that help the faithful Catholic to deepen his or her faith and stay strong. Please continue to keep us informed and support us as the Church Militant here on earth.”
This is just a handful of the testimonials we received. Over and over again, our readers and supporters tell us the same thing: we come to you because we trust you to tell us the whole truth about the crisis in the Church, and to support us with educational materials about the faith and Catholic life.
This is our work. This is what “Rebuilding Catholic Culture and Restoring Catholic Tradition” means for us, and for you. And this month, we are celebrating our fifth “birthday” as an organization. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe it’s already been five years. In other moments, it’s hard to believe it hasn’t been twenty five years. (I think crisis years are like dog years. There’s at least five years of stress in every one!)
If you’re like me, you must be fatigued and disheartened by the constant torrent of bad news in the Church. You may have noticed that not only am I personally writing about it less, but we’re reporting on it less. I’d like to take a moment to explain that.
We are not — and never have been — an organization of journalists. Although we do some reporting, we’re mostly commentators, essayists, educators, theologians, and everyday Catholics who are here to write about the important things we’ve learned about our faith and our observations about how to be a better and more authentic Catholic amidst the challenges of the modern world.
When we started covering the news, it we sort of backed into doing it. It happened during the Family Synod in 2014, and we only stepped in because almost nobody else was really talking about what was going on. Few Catholics wanted to believe that a sitting pope had invited so much destruction into our Church, and what the ramifications of that might be.
He was getting away with it, and we couldn’t let that happen. We saw a need, and we sought to fill it, because the truth needed to be told.
But over these past five years, more and more Catholic outlets — even some we’d consider “mainstream” — have begun tackling the problems with this papacy and its associates, along with their agenda for the Church. There’s now a lot of good reporting being done every day about these topics, and it has freed us up to return more of our focus to essays and articles that edify and illuminate.
We haven’t given up on news and commentary on current events, but we’ve found the freedom to make it less central to our work, and for us to stay more on task. The need we saw in 2014 is largely being filled, and our mission has always been about more than that. It’s been about what it meant to be a Catholic in the past — what worked, how the Catholic Church became the force that built and defined the entirety of Western Civilization, and how we might begin rebuilding and restoring what we’ve lost.
To that end, we’re adding new writers all the time. Scroll down our main page of featured articles and look at the bylines, and you’ll see lots of new names mixed in with the ones you’ve come to know and love as regulars. We’re very excited to work with so many talented contributors who all have their own unique and beautiful ways of talking about the faith. It’s one of the few good things about a crisis like this: it brings amazing people together, united in a common cause.
Even with our more positive focus in our work, though, we’re realistic about what we face. We’re gearing up for a return to more of a news footing, because there’s another destructive synod coming, and it’s only 51 days away.
Some folks believe that the Amazon synod will be the worst yet. That it will take things further than most ever thought possible.
We have to be ready to tackle whatever it brings.
So today I’m here to ask you, like I do every month at this time, if you feel that we have given you something of value, will you return the favor? Will you show your support with a tax-deductible* contribution? Will you ensure we remain on a stable financial footing as we leave the calm before the storm and plunge once again, headlong, into battle?
The bottom line is that we work day in and day out, providing every bit of our content for free, knowing that it is too important and reaching too many people to keep behind a subscription paywall, even though that would end our constant fundraising and give us a more stable and reliable income. We take it on faith that Matthew 6:33 applies: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.”
I’d also like to make two specific requests:
FIRST, if you’ve been reading 1P5 for a while and have never given, would you prayerfully consider doing so for the first time today? In honor of our 5th anniversary, would you be willing to donate just $5 to support the cause?
SECOND, we ask that anyone donating this month please consider making your donation a recurring donation. Only a fraction of our monthly operating revenue comes from regularly-scheduled donations. This makes it very hard to plan and structure a budget. I can’t overemphasize how much of a difference it makes for us to know what will be coming in — and when — instead of hoping that appeals like this one will be a success. It also makes things easier for you. There’s nothing to remember once you’ve set it up, and you’ll get a receipt for each and every contribution.
Creating a recurring donation is easy — just tick the box at checkout that says “Create Recurring Transaction” and set an interval. You can make your donation recur monthly, bi-weekly, yearly, quarterly — there are a number of options to choose from. One reader wrote to us last month and said, “To my shame, I just realized that I only make one-time donations to you yet have a membership to an online sewing community which charges a monthly fee. Surely, I can pry open my miserly wallet for the sake of the salvation of souls, including my own!”
I have always hoped that the work we do here would be pleasing to God, and helpful to His faithful. What we hear time and again from our readers is that they couldn’t imagine trying to navigate the situation in the Church without us.
If it matters to you, if you believe we’re doing the work God wants us to do, please help us to keep doing it, this month and every month. You can make your contribution right from this page (or by mail, if you prefer). Just click the button below:
Steve Skojec
Publisher & Executive Director
OnePeterFive.com
P.S. – If you’d like to offer your testimonial — particularly if 1P5 has helped you to make the decision to become a Catholic, or discover the old Mass, or to return to the faith after a period of discouragement, please consider sharing it with us using our contact form. Similarly, if you have any questions or suggestions for us, you can send them through the same form.
*1P5 is US 501(c)(3) and donations are tax-deductible as permitted by law.
