Why Ordered Worship Works for Me as an Autistic Catholic

First a Disclaimer: This essay explains why ordered worship works for me as an autistic Catholic, not a claim that it must work the same way for everyone.

I have always been fascinated with the liturgy from a young age. My first memory of Mass was thinking, “Why does this priest love 1970s green so much?” I grew up in a pretty nominally Catholic family. We went to church on Sundays and at Christmas. I do not recall ever going on holy days of obligation. I remember hearing the priest chant the final doxology, “through him, with him, in him,” and wondering what it must have sounded like in medieval times to hear monks chant it. Then I discovered my mom’s 1965 transitional hand missal. I was shook. The Mass as I knew it was vastly different from what my mom had grown up with.

This began my journey into Catholicism. I needed to know it. So I went and bought The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Catholicism. The title fit, because I was an idiot, even though I was confirmed. I was able to go through years of CCD and graduate, I believe it is called confirmation, without the ability to even pray one Hail Mary.

But this Catholicism thing gave me a structure to work with in my moral life. A system I could follow. Avoid X, do Y. If you sin, go to confession. I did not realize it at the time, but I craved structure. So off I went to military college. There, my faith, while small, began to grow. I would go to the weekday campus Catholic Mass. Still, doubts lingered.

I left military college after a year and found myself in Milledgeville, Georgia, at the parish associated with Flannery O’Connor. It was a small parish that could seat maybe one hundred Catholics, one of the few pre-1900s parishes in the Archdiocese of Atlanta. It was pastored by a priest who loved incense and candles. It still had its altar rail, probably because, if I remember correctly, it had been donated by a parish family in the 1950s. It was totally different from the Catholicism I had grown up with.

I discovered my first Catholic blog, long since defunct, called Dappled Things, run by a priest from Virginia. I mostly remember that he posted beautiful pictures of Masses, including the 1962 Mass.

I was going to Mass, confession, and adoration. I thought I was finally getting this Catholic thing down. If I just studied enough theology, philosophy, and apologetics, it would all click. The Church had never taught error. The Pope was protected from on high from that problem. I could rest assured that doctrine did not change, except when it did, but those cases could be explained away. My system was safe. The intellectual approach to the faith was the route for me. Still, I struggled to connect with my peers. A frequent thought was, “What am I supposed to say?” especially in response to questions like, “Why are you so quiet?” I missed social cue after social cue. But I had some friends, a railroad map, and some train pictures in my dorm like any normal non-autistic student does, and I chugged along.

I loved the liturgy. I loved its structure and the peace that order could provide. I wanted to celebrate the liturgy, so it was off to seminary. I loved praying the Liturgy of the Hours with the house. The Mass offered there was modern, but structured. I knew what I was going to get from week to week. I worked hard trying to shift from the intellectual to the heart. I tried to get out of my head and love God. But how?

The anxiety that had been nagging me all through college lingered. Why did I struggle to connect with my peers? I must have been doing something wrong.

So I did what I later learned is typical of high-masking autistic individuals. I worked twice as hard to overcome those issues. I took an elective public speaking class. Father Leo Patalinghug taught a hobby class called pastoral cooking, so I took that. Any social event I could attend, I attended. But I still found myself having difficulty connecting with my classmates, and I seriously doubted I could be all things to all men. I was just too serious and could not banter or joke to save my life. Over winter break from seminary, while at my parents’ Catholic mega-parish, I knew the priesthood was not for me.

After leaving seminary, I continued to struggle with prayer. How was I supposed to connect with God? How do I form a “personal relationship” with God? I struggled to form personal relationships with my peers. Did I even know what that meant?

I started attending the Traditional Latin Mass. I liked it for two reasons. First, it was ancient, and that appealed to me for reasons I could not yet articulate. Second, and more importantly, I knew what to expect. There was no real variability based on who was saying Mass. I did not need to worry about being asked to shake hands at the beginning of Mass or wonder which penitential rite or Eucharistic Prayer would be used. It was predictable, invariable, and ordered.

Outside of Mass, however, I was still struggling to pray. Somewhere along this journey, I found the Antiochian Little Red Prayer Book. The idea was simple. Struggling to pray? Try these ancient prayers in a simple structure.

I eventually had to leave the TLM because of a job change and soon found myself at another mega-parish. My brain could not handle the variability and never knowing what to expect at Mass. I fled to a Byzantine Catholic Church and again found order and peace. My main issue with the Novus Ordo was that it felt geared toward extroverts. There was too much variability and too much expectation of being, well, extroverted.

I was still struggling with anxiety and with doubts about the Church. Papal infallibility, and how Pope John Paul II could change the doctrine on the death penalty by saying it was bad in an encyclical, troubled me. Overall, though, my faith felt mostly secure.

Then Benedict resigned, and Francis was elected. He threw my entire system-based approach to faith into chaos. Going from the very high-church Benedict to the low-church Francis was jarring enough. Then came the statements. Critiquing a rosary spiritual bouquet. Saying we should not breed like rabbits. Footnotes doing more work than they should, followed by claims that he did not even remember them. I was in a tailspin. At least my city still had the 1962 Mass offered in a couple of parishes. Then came Traditionis Custodes. Then the rescript banning certain content from parish bulletins. Then Cardinal Roche saying no one should act like they were licking wounds because no one was being hurt. I was angry and nearly jumped ship, but I hung on, with varying degrees of success.

Then I came across Steve Skojec’s post on autism and faith, and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

For me, the faith really WAS a system. It was an external structure within which I could operate with a limited degree of autonomy while understanding that it was my job to color within the lines. It gave me a sense of order and logic and ‘this is how things work.’

I have also never had anything remotely approaching a ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus. I don’t even know what the hell that means. How can I have a personal relationship with someone who is not here, who does not talk to me, whom I have never seen, and who I know nothing about except what other people tell me?

I had always approached the faith through intellect and system. I had also never had what I would describe as a personal relationship with Jesus.

I had long suspected that I might be autistic. I took online tests and always landed somewhere borderline. I was anxious, socially awkward, and, most damning of all, I loved trains. But after reading Skojec’s post, I knew.

Inspired by his post, I spent money I did not have to get tested. The result was autism. Suddenly, things began to click for me. If a personal relationship was not how my brain worked, how had people historically related to God? As King and Judge. That was something my brain could understand.

Why do I have two bookshelves full of breviaries, old missals, and liturgy books? Partly because, for reasons God only knows, liturgy is my autistic special interest. More importantly, solemn and beautiful liturgy is where I feel most connected to God.

So what is ordered worship? It is not about control or personal preference. It is about removing obstacles that my brain cannot simply ignore or power through. Structure does not replace encounter. Structure makes encounter possible. When the liturgy is stable, meaning can speak without constant cognitive negotiation. I am not bracing for surprise, performing socially, or trying to discern what comes next. I can simply be with the Lord.

That is where I meet God. Not because structure produces Him, but because it gets out of the way. Ordered worship allows me to stand before God as He is, not as I am expected to perform. It lets the Church pray for me when I cannot find the words, and it lets the rite say what needs to be said without asking me to be extroverted.

So why ordered worship? Because it gives me a way to be Catholic without pretending to be someone I am not. Because it locates God in an objective act rather than a subjective experience. Because within that order, I am free to worship without anxiety, without performance, and without confusion. And in that freedom, limited and structured though it may be, I am free to connect with God Himself.