Msgr Pope's popular new article

[bardegaulois]

In the National Catholic Register recently, Msgr Charles Pope opined on the future of the Traditional Latin Mass in an article that's attracting a good share of notice: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/msgr-pope/an-urgent-warning-about-the-future-of-the-traditional-latin-mass

I come from one of those few dioceses in the US in which there is no weekly EF Mass, though we are amply served by parishes offering them in other dioceses mere miles from our border with them. I'm also secretary of the Una Voce group sponsoring a monthly TLM, and often serve as MC at our monthly Missa Cantata. My experience differs somewhat from Msgr Pope's. In some places I hear Mass, attendance numbers are stable, but with a tendency toward a gradual decline. Others, however, are still growing. It's likely that geographical factors play a big role here, so I would think Msgr Pope's estimation might be true in some cases, but not true in all.

The good monsignor's notes about the financial management of the Church, however, bring up many points that we don't often think about. For a church to operate, it needs money, and for it to get money, then it needs a good number of generous people in the congregation. There is a group of about 20 families that will hear Mass at the Una-Voce-sponsored Mass I spoke of earlier, with a few random others showing up. We pay rent to the parish hosting us, and give a small honorarium to the priest who offered it; to his credit, he has refused an honorarium on certain occasions when our collection was low. Our goal, of course, is a regular weekly Mass within a certain geographical area, and we will soon be petitioning our bishop for some species of canonical recognition, though I harbour no illusions about this. Without growth, it will not be possible for us to sustain ourselves. With many of the pastors in our area being hostile, those who aren't being overworked, and a bishop who has never answered our letters seeming ambivalent, we are surely going to get passed over quite a bit as a mere cipher in the ecclesiastical life of the area--at least until the Baby-Boom die-off takes many of the local parishes with it (morbid, I know, but on those admittedly rare occasions that I've heard an Ordinary Form Mass in my area, I've usually been the only person below the age of 60 there).

Pope Benedict's prediction of a smaller, purer church seems to be panning out--and not just with regards to the TLM. The monsignor mentions schools; I'm sure a whole spectrum of ecclesiastical organizations are imperiled by this phenomenon, and that newer, growth-sector endeavours will have a lot of trouble launching simply due to lack of broad interest and resources. Perhaps we will simply have to become more accustomed to our poverty.

Has anyone any thoughts about this?

[Maggyie]

I think both you and Monsignor Pope are correct. In many parts of the church a demographic winter is approaching which will take with it many institutions. From my personal vantage point I see many small Catholic colleges fading away or merging as costs rise and educational strategies among students change.

However the extraordinary form I think is exposed to numbers problems in general. Traditionalism is for many people a phase. I know it was for me. This causes churn.

Also with any niche interest group it's hard to make things like time and location consistent, and inconsistency makes keeping participants a real challenge. 

[MarysLittleFlower]

I disagree that for many traditionalism is a phase. I attend a traditional parish and we have a good number of people attending and the people are stable there - they come and tend to stay for the most part. Many some parishes are smaller - ours is a good size and the Bishop even gave us a bigger church a few years ago... Since then I think we've grown more too. Also there are a good number of families with many kids. 

I think though the article has a good point about evangelising. Some are attracted to the liturgy. Others want something more contemporary. What our Legion of Mary has been doing is knocking on doors in our neighbourhood and inviting anyone interested to the TLM. Many people who go to our parish though seem to just love the traditional things, but a number came from other parishes... Most come from all over the city. 

[bardegaulois]

3 minutes ago, MarysLittleFlower said:

I disagree that for many traditionalism is a phase. I attend a traditional parish and we have a good number of people attending and the people are stable there - they come and tend to stay for the most part. Many some parishes are smaller - ours is a good size and the Bishop even gave us a bigger church a few years ago... Since then I think we've grown more too. Also there are a good number of families with many kids. 

Maggyie said that it could be a phase "for many people," not for all. I concur with her, but whether many means a majority is an open question. Most that I know who habitually hear the TLM are stalwarts, though you, Maggyie, Msgr. Pope, and I have only anecdotal evidence based on our own experiences. Moreover, I doubt highly that any religious sociologist has ever done a study on this; I doubt too many dioceses even will keep records on who hears the EF as compared with who hears the OF.

[MarysLittleFlower]

Personally I believe that the Church's traditions are for all Catholics and I'm very glad to share the TLM with anyone. It helped my faith so much and the priests are very orthodox / good spiritual directors. Another thing our parish does is the priest does a weekly catechism and a number of non Catholics are attending - not everyone is from our parish. So I think the parish just being active helps a lot! Of course I'd like to see our parish grow more but I think the most important thing is not even numbers but having a strong number of lay people to be an example to the others. If we are strong spiritually as a parish others would be attracted to it if they want a spiritual life. Of course those who don't may not, but conversion needs to happen too. 

[bardegaulois]

"[A] number of non Catholics are attending"... The TLM is so vital to the New Evangelization. In my community, sometimes as many as a quarter of those hearing Mass aren't Catholic. That's why I noted that there's so much potential for growth here.

Edited January 9, 2016 by bardegaulois

[Credo in Deum]

I think Fr. Goodwin put it best when he said the TLM is a missionary Mass, meaning we are living in a time where there is a generation of Catholics who never knew about this Mass, never grew up with it, or know it's history. They have grown up with the NO and that is all they know. It also doesnt help when members of the episcopate as well as the clergy treat the Mass as some outdated thing which hinders ecumenism and unity.  Despite the fact that with the NO, which everyone has taken to mean "Vernacular Mass," we now have a Spanish Mass, English Mass, Vietnamese Mass, and on and on and on, so that now we are segregated by language when we were, at one point in time in the Latin Rite, united by Latin, but I digress.

With the TLM being a missionary Mass we will need to evangelize our fellow Catholics of it's beauty and educate them and produce educational material if we want it to continue.  We also need to stress the importance of Latin and the works of the Holy Fathers who from Benedict on have stressed its importance in the Church and seminaries .

  

[Sponsa-Christi]

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I don't quite understand why it's important to promote a wider attendance of the TLM specifically, as opposed to just promoting better Mass attendance (i.e., of either form) in general.

I mean, I'm glad when people who like the TLM can get to it, and if the TLM is the "hook" that gets lapsed Catholics to come back to Mass, then so much the better.  

But I guess I just don't see why it's such a problem if the TLM always remains as kind of a niche spirituality. After all, the Church even calls it the "extraordinary" rather than the ordinary form. 

[MarysLittleFlower]

Sponsa, I really think it might be that way because some believe that certain things have become part of the OF that are not from V2 let alone tradition, and that these things have caused the Mass to become too 'casual'. I for one have felt this way as a convert and finding the TLM was like finding lots of other traditions that have been forgotten or swept aside around the 70s. For this reason I think many who attend the TLM want to share it with others.. For many its like discovering the richness of our tradition that is not experienced as much in a more contemporary parish. I think Pope Benedict said something about the EF influencing the OF. Its not just a different form but the fact that the EF has kept all the things that have developed in the Mass over centuries, and the OF feels often like a new constructed thing not in continuity with the old. A lot of this is caused by things added after the Council and indults that became very popular as if they were 'norms' 

Of course in some parishes the OF would seem more like what is in the documents. There's a Basilica near me that has traditional music and altar rails and that already helps a lot. But for many discovering the TLM is like discovering a side of Catholicism they never knew, or thought had disappeared

[Nihil Obstat]

1 hour ago, Sponsa-Christi said:

This is probably going to be an unpopular opinion, but I don't quite understand why it's important to promote a wider attendance of the TLM specifically, as opposed to just promoting better Mass attendance (i.e., of either form) in general.

I mean, I'm glad when people who like the TLM can get to it, and if the TLM is the "hook" that gets lapsed Catholics to come back to Mass, then so much the better.  

But I guess I just don't see why it's such a problem if the TLM always remains as kind of a niche spirituality. After all, the Church even calls it the "extraordinary" rather than the ordinary form. 

Some of us believe that it would be beneficial to the Church as a whole if the traditional Mass was once again normative for the Latin rite.

[MarysLittleFlower]

That's why I see the Church's traditions and the TLM as a general Catholic thing and not a 'niche' thing so much.. Because everything in the Church is for all

Edited January 11, 2016 by MarysLittleFlower

[truthfinder]

My current parish is a bit odd in that the church itself in known for reverent liturgies and the EF Sunday Mass occurs tightly scheduled between two OF Masses.  People will often wander in as Mass is ending.  There's no real ghettoizing like there are in many other places: it's a readily accessible church, with a 'normal' Mass time.  Further, the priests certainly stay away from being controversial at all (sometimes to my chagrin; that's not to say that their sermons aren't orthodox. They are).  So today, there was a family event that was happening - many people attended, and they were exposed to the EF.  Who knows, maybe some will return another week.  

There certainly are young people, and in this parish, they tend to be more men (or the women are just better at hiding). There are older people - but in some of the others comment boxes I've read people flipping out about how many 50 year olds there are.  Considering parish back home, that would be positively young.  So there has been some growth - I haven't been here long enough to know what it was like before. But there have been people join within the last year or so (myself included) and we stick around.  But because of the environment that the parish has developed, when people who don't regularly attend the EF discuss the EF, it's a lot less "those weird traddies" and more "well, neat, but it's not really my thing, but if there's a special Mass or a family event, I'll attend". (That's not to say there is no antagonism at all - there's plenty of talk about how difficult some priests from other parishes really don't anything that sounds 'traditional'.) 

I'm not sure what I've achieved by venting all this, but I'll say that, after being home for Christmas and experiencing regular OF masses again (all of which followed the book), I'm so glad to be back to my home in the EF.  

 

[MarysLittleFlower]

Just wanted to share some comments from Fr Z on this article: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2016/01/tlm-evangelize-or-else-close-and-die/