Today I want to write about an online Catholic magazine that’s near and dear to my heart, but I’m not talking about Crisis Magazine in this case. I’m referring to our sister publication, OnePeterFive.

As many of you know, 1P5 was founded back in 2014 by Steve Skojec as a means to “rebuild Catholic culture” and “restore Catholic tradition.” It was to be a bold traditionalist outlet, formed in response to the anti-traditional Francis pontificate. I was one of 1P5’s first writers, and I’ve always been grateful to Steve for being one of the first to give me a writing outlet.

In 2021, 1P5 was acquired by Crisis Publications, which also owns Crisis Magazine. This was done on my initiative, as I knew Steve was looking to move away from 1P5, but I felt it still could serve a vital role in the Church. I named Timothy Flanders to replace Steve as the new editor in chief.

After five years, much has changed, but I still believe 1P5 has an important mission to fulfill. There’s still a need to rebuild Catholic culture and restore Catholic tradition.

OnePeterFive has changed too. What’s different? The most obvious thing is that we have a different pope now than we did then. There’s lively debate within traditional Catholic circles about Pope Leo XIV—is he friendly to tradition, or is he just a copy of Francis?—but no matter what you think of him, he has a completely different style than Francis, if nothing else. Above all, he doesn’t seem to hold the antipathy toward tradition that Francis did.

But more importantly for our purposes, what I would say has changed the most is the traditional Catholic movement itself, at least here in America. And it’s changed for both the better—and the worse.

How has it changed for the better? In many ways, traditional Catholicism has become more accepted, more normalized. Whereas for a long time traditionalism was a fringe movement within the Church, now traditionalists are part of the wider Church in ways unimaginable just a decade ago. Young Catholics in particular don’t look askance at traditionalism, and in fact they often embrace it in disproportionate numbers.

But how has traditional Catholicism changed for the worse? It’s become more internally divided. Perhaps that was inevitable. Success bred complacency, and Francis’s death removed the common focal point. There’s no question in my mind that there’s far more infighting among traditionalists today than five years ago. Under Francis, there was a unifying force among traditionalists: resisting the anti-traditional agenda of the Argentine pope. Now, however, with Pope Leo, there are real disagreements among traditional voices as to how to best proceed.

Which brings me back to OnePeterFive. There’s no question that 1P5 has changed under Tim Flanders’s direction compared to when Steve Skojec ran it. Steve focused much more on exposing the corruption and scandals in the Church, as well as the attacks on tradition by high-ranking Church prelates. Tim’s emphasis is different. I would argue that both, in their own ways, were right for their times.

In the 2010s, it was vitally important to publicly resist the anti-traditional initiatives of Pope Francis, and much of that resistance was simply revealing it. Most Catholics lived in a state of ignorance, assuming a pope was always well-intentioned, even if sometimes wrong. After all, most Catholics had only lived under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, two obviously well-intentioned men. But with Francis, it was different, and Catholics needed to wake up. That’s what 1P5 tried to do.

And in many ways, it (along with many other outlets) succeeded. By now, most Catholics know that there are high-ranking prelates who are not well-intentioned, and who work against Catholic tradition. What’s the point of continually harping on that, other than to spike your audience’s dopamine levels and your own page views?

That’s ultimately why Tim has taken 1P5 in a different direction. Instead of focusing on internal Church politics—we all know there’s something rotten in Rome—1P5 is instead focused on helping tradition-friendly Catholics to live lives of holiness and to rebuild Christendom—to truly “rebuild Catholic culture” and “restore Catholic tradition.” Just complaining about the state of the Church isn’t going to do that, so 1P5 is now much more about giving concrete help for this harder work.

Sadly, due to the divisions within traditional Catholicism, this change hasn’t come without controversy. A number of trads are mad that Timothy Flanders and 1P5 aren’t as mad as they are. Their definition of traditional Catholic is someone who is always angry about the state of the Church and who spends all his time online complaining about it. To them, 1P5 has “compromised.” Some even invent fantastical theories about the Vatican paying off outlets like 1P5 so that they won’t expose the Vatican’s problems.

Yet what really is happening is that Tim realizes two things: (1) the situation today is not like it was in the 2010s; and (2) we need to think long term. Just complaining won’t reform the Church. But restoring forgotten Catholic practices, embracing the traditional Latin Mass, and diving into the depths of traditional Catholic spirituality will. That’s the mission of 1P5. In a real way, Tim has taken 1P5 back to its roots of rebuilding Catholic culture and restoring Catholic tradition.

If you haven’t visited OnePeterFive lately, I encourage you to do so. There you will find many riches that will help you to live a deeper, and more traditional, Catholic life, and to rebuild Catholic culture in your own corner of the world.

P.S. I’m also very excited to announce—on this feast of Blessed Karl of Austria—that 1P5 has a new member of its editorial board: Archduke Eduard Habsburg, well-known member of the Habsburg family, author of many books, and former Hungarian Ambassador to the Holy See. He’s a wonderful addition, and a sign of the 1P5’s bright future.