A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

The Economist asks a question…… December 13, 2012

……so many of us have asked ourselves. Did the Church take a wrong turn 50 years ago?   This question was asked at the end of a short article describing the Traditionalist resurgence in the Church. The article is particularly interesting in how it gets certain basic things right that so many sexular pagan media organs just can’t seem to comprehend, while it also points out some truths that even many conservative Catholics refuse to countenance. Some highlights (my emphasis and comments):

SINCE the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the Roman Catholic church has striven to adapt to the modern world. But in the West—where many hoped a contemporary message would go down best—believers have left in droves. Sunday mass attendance in England and Wales has fallen by half from the 1.8m recorded in 1960; the average age of parishioners has risen from 37 in 1980 to 52 now. In America attendance has declined by over a third since 1960. Less than 5% of French Catholics attend regularly, and only 15% in Italy. Yet as the mainstream wanes, traditionalists wax. [I don’t know where they got their figures, but Sunday Mass attendance has fallen by much more than a third.  I think they meant 2/3. And even that is understating reality badly.  By my own calculations, going from the numbers of parishioners various parishes claim, and their actual Sunday Mass attendance, the average in the northern part of the Dallas Diocese is more like 10-15%.]

Take the Latin mass, dumped by the Vatican in 1962 for liturgies in vernacular languages. In its most traditional form, the priest consecrates the bread and wine [Body and Blood] in a whisper with his back to the congregation: anathema to those who think openness is the spirit of the age. But Father John Zuhlsdorf, an American priest and blogger, says it challenges worshippers, unlike the cosy liberalism of the regular services. “It is not just a school assembly,” he says. [OK, that’s not much justification for an ancient practice, one with enormous theology behind it.  In point of fact, the turning around of the priest was the single most destructive act the revolutionaries were able to force on the Liturgy]

Others share his enthusiasm. The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, started in 1965, now has over 5,000 members. The weekly number of Latin masses is up from 26 in 2007 to 157 now. In America it is up from 60 in 1991 to 420. At Brompton Oratory, a hotspot of London traditionalism, 440 flock to the main Sunday Latin mass. That is twice the figure for the main English one. Women sport mantillas (lace headscarves). Men wear tweeds.

But it is not a fogeys’ hangout: the congregation is young and international. Like evangelical Christianity, traditional Catholicism is attracting people who were not even born when the Second Vatican Council tried to rejuvenate the church. [The average of those who assist at Mass at the local TLM parish is probably 15 years younger than any other parish I have been to.  For one, there are far, far more children. But even among the adults, there is a majority in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.]

The return of the old rite causes quiet consternation among more modernist Catholics. [Hmmmm…….even a secular organ like the Economist, a very liberal organ, is able to recognize in the progressive wing of the Chuch more than a little modernism.  In point of fact, that wing is modernist, period]  Timothy Radcliffe, once head of Britain’s Dominicans, sees in it “a sort of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ nostalgia”. [B as in B, S as in S. So, I’m nostalgic?  How so?  I wasn’t even Catholic 15 years ago. I was born years after the Council ended, after the Nervous Urdu was introduced.  I’m attracted to the beauty, the reverence, the theological wholeness, the overwhelming Grace that flows through the Latin Mass.  There are many more reasons, but I’ve come to be deeply, deeply attached to the traditional Mass] The traditionalist revival, he thinks, is a reaction against the “trendy liberalism” of his generation. [No, it’s a reaction against the destructive modernism “of his generation” that has devastated the Church.  I love the TLM and all the other timeless traditions of the Faith because THEY ARE GOOD FOR MY SOUL.  That’s it] Some swings of pendulums may be inevitable. But for a church hierarchy in Western countries beset by scandal and decline, the rise of a traditionalist avant-garde is unsettling. Is it merely an outcrop of eccentricity, or a sign that the church took a wrong turn 50 years ago?

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it.  And I don’t think it’s really even a question – the Church DID take a wrong turn 50 years ago, a horrible, nightmarish turn, and the fruit is plain to see: Mass attendance collapsed, number of active Catholic collapsed, very sharp drop in all kinds of vocations (marriage, priesthood, religious), church donations plummeting – by any objective measure, the changes implemented in the Church have had the exact opposite effect from that promised.  The revolution was sold as harbinging a “new springtime,” but what we have experienced is the coldest winter in history.   The only question to my mind is the extent to which the Council itself brought about this winter of suffering and despair, rather than the false spirit that we know did much of the damage.

But it’s more than just the Traditional Latin Mass that attracts people.  If one is blessed to find a vibrant traditional parish, one is exposed to an entirely different culture, a radically different form of existence.  At these still relatively few parishes, the Faith dominates the life of virtually all who belong.  One’s life tends to begin to orbit around the star of the parish.  This is how life was for almost all faithful Catholics for most of the history of the Church.  But now, only small pockets of such remain.  But we are incredibly blessed to have even these pockets, given the revolution that has shaken the Church to its very foundations in these past few decades. I pray they continue to grow, and more and more souls seek out these parishes that I have found have a way to transform your whole existence.