Do we need something more than the Latin Mass? TLM churches empty

[1seeker]

This is something I have wrestled with recently: do we need something more than the Mass of the Ages, to get the people into the door and revive our fortunes?

You might say that if we follow Rorate's posts, the Latin-Rite churches are busting at the seams with people.

However this has not been my experience. A significant UK theologian, a champion of the Latin Rite and once-attender of the SSPX intending to write a biography of Archbishop Lefebvre (to show you his major Tradition bona fides), had this to say:

http://thesensiblebond.blogspot.com/2014/11/bad-company.html

I've been writing this blog for the comfort of the demoralised for over a year now, but if that is what you are in need of, tonight at least, try to find it somewhere else. I am bad company this evening...

...And then, there are those who are offering us false hope... here in the UK the Birmingham Oratory's Solemn High Mass on a Sunday (Birmingham being the UK's second largest conurbation) is still rather patchily attended in comparison to their 12pm Family Mass.

In the last three weeks I have been to two traditional Masses in the Oxford area to direct the schola. At the first, my family and I made up about half the congregation, and at the second there were only a few more. Except for London where maybe the traditional scene has the momentum of a capital city with around eight million people, I just don't see that much vibrant life in the traditional movement here. The seething crowds at the opening of Institute of Christ the King churches were one-day wonders.

I see a small number of traditionally minded people living often heroic lives of generosity, and doubtless God sees and rewards what they do in abundance. But I don't see some vast renaissance. Contrast the Brum Oratory's meagre congregation with the 4,000 [Catholic] charismatics who gather once a month for a convention in West Bromich, fasting and adoring the Blessed Sacrament, spending the day in prayer, queuing for hours for confession, and, yes, probably getting a little giddy during the liturgy.

According to him, the masses of people we see at some of the launches of TLM parishes do not repeat into the life of those churches, and are "one-day wonders." What else do we need, apart from the reproduction of the holy liturgy, to actually get the Revival to happen? I am sure that SOME TLM parishes have succeeded, but it does not seem to be the case across the board.

If we get empty pews, and the Charismatics get 4,000 attendees, then it becomes clear to the Bishops, the Pope, and the Hierarchy at large about about WHO IS IMPORTANT to the Church's future.

[Lynne]

What time are these Masses? TLMs at 1 pm or 2 pm or 7 pm (unless it's a HOD during the week) are not going to cut it. The TLMs that I've attended, a diocesan at 10:30 am and SSPX at 9 am, are standing room only.

[Miriam_M]

Well, I haven't "wrestled with it lately" because our local Institute of Christ the King Masses are not

one-day wonders

They have been going strong for every year since they began, and there are no signs of any dwindling interest whatsoever.

[The Harlequin King]

There are a few major factors that keep the traditional Catholic "movement" (for lack of a better word) from growing. Lynne highlighted an institutional problem: if it's a diocesan Mass, it'll probably be hobbled by getting sidelined to an inconvenient time of day. (Though since I'm just not a morning person, I personally think 1pm or, even better, 7pm is great.)

One problem that's not limited to diocesan Latin Masses, but also to those offered by the traditional societies, is that they're hosted in awful church buildings in equally awful or obscure parts of town. My local diocesan TLM is hosted in a church that drives me mad by how ugly it is. The windows are shaped like Tetris blocks and the carpeting completely deadens the sound of any choral music.


Still, we need to face up to the fact that most people don't, and never will, warm up to the idea of worshipping in Latin. This isn't an argument against using Latin, but just a statement of reality. When Rome itself surrendered the use of Latin, it condemned the traditional Roman Rite for the rest of history to be relegated to the preserve of intellectuals and the ultra-devout. We are now so far removed from the culture that originally gave birth to the Latin Mass that even if a pope were to order a complete return to Latin (even while keeping the Novus Ordo Missal), virtually no one would comply.

So.... yes, it is quite foreseeable that even a church as grand as the Birmingham Oratory, placed in the center of a metropolis, could still fail to gather as many people as a more pedestrian liturgy offered at the same church, in a less convenient time of day. To most people, Latin is scary.

[Miriam_M]

Again, the locations of such churches and times of such Masses vary.  Many are not within ugly architecture or inconvenient times of day or sketchy parts of town, but quite the opposite.  I don't think it's helpful to generalize. 

And as far as the language is concerned, Latin is "scary" because many people, if not most, are frightened to try "new" (haha) things when there is not enough support/teaching for the same. 

Recently, at an N.O. Mass I had to attend, the cantor gave a brief introduction about the differences between Advent & Christmas music, and between Lenten and Easter music.  The congregation was fascinated.  He had all eyes and you could hear a pin drop.  People are actually hungering for what no one has bothered to tell them or educate them in.

[Arun]

yes i remember from my NO days, that feeling of realisation that you don't even know what you don't know.

aside from the SSPX which is the largest parish in our whole diocese, the TLMs around here have faced a lot of difficulty from the Bishop. there have been subtle measures taken to, as HK put it, hobble it.

[Rose]

I'm familiar with the SSPX mass centres available around the South of England from where the blogger, iirc, is writing. Burghclere is a thriving parish. Bristol is thriving. London, obviously, is doing well. And unless things have changed recently, Oxford was doing just fine. The smaller chapels have smaller congregations but that's to be expected. Oxford masses are held in a community centre. Bristol masses are in the beautiful, grand chapel attached to the retreat house. So it isnt just to do with location, or time either- masses range from 8am to 5pm across the district. The Northern chapels seem to be doing pretty well too. So this post gives a somewhat bleaker image of the TLM attendence in Britain than is the case, at least with the SSPX.

[Elliott]

This is something I have wrestled with recently: do we need something more than the Mass of the Ages, to get the people into the door and revive our fortunes?

The Catholic Faith!

[PolishCrusader]

Even though he was a disgusting Jihadist, this quote he manufactured is the truth:  "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse"

Repeal Vatican 2 and bring back the ancient faith.  The next generation will then have two main choices, the traditional Catholic faith that promotes values of masculinity, brotherhood, unnerving zeal, a strong Church headed by uncompromising doctrines, such and such, or the sissy, whiny, tolerance and homosexuality/transgenderism promoting, "Halp, I'm being oppressed!", faux intellectual, multicultural, liberal hippies.  Guess which side more people from the next generation are going to naturally choose?

[tradne4163]

Ultimately, change must come from the top. That's the way the Church was instituted. The various traditional societies and orders can keep things afloat and help rescue some souls, but that's about all. Only a reigning pope can effectively reverse the course.

It sounds bleak in light of the current state of affairs in the Vatican, but it's the truth.

[Mattock]

It is my experience that where the True Faith is their are lots and lots of people even if it's some out of the way, tiny, and very poor parish/chapel in a bad neighborhood. The part of the Church that is dying, in my experience, is the Modernist Church (the great bulk of the establishment).  The non-Modernist NO seems to hold on okay for a while, like the charismatics and reform of the reform types, but they are very unstable and hemorrhage members into Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy -- though the reform of the reform sometimes acts as a sort of vestibule to true and full tradition. The modernist-pinko-commie-swishy-squishy-church is graying out hard even if it currently holds Rome -- even if that hold is something of a stranglehold. Also, why do we really need to compare charismaticism with true apostolic Christianity? Error and sin are popular and Christ and his Cross are unpopular. The real religion of the working class in England is football; what are we to say to that? Sadly we live during a wicked and impious generation and most of our cohort are almost assuredly damned. What can we do? We know very well why the traditional rites and traditional devotions are just and pleasing in the sight of God. The vast majority of man does not see this. What can we do about all this? All we can do is make damn well sure that we let God make us just and pleasing in His eyes. Kyrie eleison.

[KingTheoden]

The blogger points out a harsh reality that many who stick with the Tridentine Rite do not want to admit.

While there may be stronger pockets than not, the fact is that I am hard pressed to come up with a single true enclave of anything resembling a resurgence in traditional expression of the Faith, at least in America. 

Part of this is so given our pluralistic and urban-suburban expanses.  But ultimately, we need to face the reality of the situation: a) The vast majority of people do not will it b) the hierarchy truly dislikes it almost to a man c) the few who remain committed to the Tridentine Mass (inter alia) have been unable to evangelize.

Pretending that swarms of people are flocking to the TLM and the spirituality that goes with is not going to help anything.  Next Sunday, do a count and then add up the population of the area within 35 minutes of driving time.  Indeed, if there is a robust restoration occurring, then why is it that virtually no one (apart from The Remnant) is discussing the Charlie Hebdo shooting for what it is: the liberal Enlightenment anti-religion vs. anything else (good or bad.)

This isn't to discourage, but to remind us where we are.  As a convert to Catholicism and one who did go through RCIA initially and came to the Tridentine organically, I would say that traditionalist chapels/oratories/etc. have a tendency to arrive at a 'no salvation outside of my chapel' mentality. 

In many cases, the laity are asked to go to extraordinary lengths to keep things together by participating as emergency clerics (altar servers), unpaid singers, cleaning/maintenance (gratis), and provide for the financials.  What can (and does) happen is that people are pressured to put off their life responsibilities and this, to varying degrees, creates 'real life' tangible problems.

We need to restore, organically, inch by inch of hard work and not rather be like Civil War re-enactors.

The goal is heaven for ourselves and those around us.  To these ends, I only see even the seeds of anything for the future if we serious take stock of leading proper Catholic lives (which includes attending carefully to a life of prayer and fully to our temporal duties), studying history and foundational points of the Faith, and being ready to be a missionary if God wills it of us.

I also think that it is good to have some relationship with the geographic parish unless they are completely sacrilegious.  We are instructed to be wise as serpents and being a good emissary could be, in some cases, the germ of an occasional Low Mass.

Obviously, all of this is chock full of prudential judgments and does vary significantly given someone's state in life.  It could be that God is allowing for these mini-Arcs, as it were.  But even if that is so, we cannot adopt a bunker mentality or a schimatic approach to the diocese.  Read up on history: there have been heinous heretics in charge of many things before.  So, we live in one particularly nightmarish time.  Well, God placed us each here for a reason and that reason is certainly not, for anyone, to 'study up' on the latest scandal or obsess about this or that splinter of a splinter group.

And likewise, we need to keep in mind that the externals, aesthetically pleasing as they are and better-communicative of the nature of the Sacrifice of the Mass, are not the ends themselves, but the means to an end.  Namely, that end is union with God. 

[LoneWolfRadTrad]

Christendom

[Gerard]

The problem took anywhere from 150 years of weakening in the Church to the collapse in the sixties. 

Most people don't even know what has happened except for a comparative few. Like the first moments after a disaster.

At best, we are witnesses and participants in only the first "shoots" of a restoration that is going to take a long, long time. I would be surprised if it's less than a few more decades before we get a Pope that is going to honestly and truthfully and publicly assess the crisis in the Church and anything a Pope does that has some teeth to it and some grace accompanying it is going to take a long, long time to take root. 

Barring God's direct action, it's probably going to be a century or more before this crisis organically gets out of the Church. 

I would love to see something big occur in my lifetime, but I'm not going to count on it.  Work for it, yes, but like those craftsman that built Cathedrals they would never see completed, we do our part and pray that others will build on it. 

[Maximilian]

Lately I've been noticing that there are more funerals than baptisms. We think to ourselves that traditional Catholic families are all having lots of children and we are going to be like the Orthodox Jews, but the reality is that only a small handful of families are having lots of children, and meanwhile the older generation who started the resistance back in the seventies are dying off at a very rapid pace. Three funerals in the past week alone of older members of the parish.

There is a missing generation in between the octogenarians and the young children. The children of those who are now passing away are mostly not traditional Catholics. The funerals are very sad affairs. And that means that their grandchildren also are not traditional Catholics, if they even have grandchildren.

I think it's going to take quite a few years before the young families with children are able to develop enough momentum to overcome the mortality rate of the older generation.