Observations

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I have noticed that people who attend the EF Mass tend to have larger families than those that attend the OF Mass. I have heard that orders like the SSPX and FSSP have seminaries that are full and the SSPX is building a massive new seminary in Virginia. Is there a correlation between large families and vocations? My local OF parish averages 2 children per family.
 
Well, I suppose the odds are better the more kids you have.
🤷

But I don’t think that’s a EF vs. OF thing, really.
Plus, we 're not to argue one form over the other here.
Both are valid, both are good.

We should all be praying fro vocations.
Even single people. 😉
 
There do tend to be more visible larger families at the EF Masses. I think that is because there are fewer times offered for the EF Mass, so that if a family prefers it, they will all go together. Whereas, if they go to OF Masses, they could easily split up and go to different Masses or even different parishes. This is just something I have noticed.

We have a larger family, and we go to EF or OF Masses, depending on the weekend and on how the children are doing regarding health or behavior (we have a very young family still). I am glad to have the option. Plus, our geographical parish has lots of opportunities for involvement, but only one Latin Mass per month. So we go to OF Masses a couple times a month, I think.

All that said, to be completely honest, the EF Mass is a high priority for us, so as things get easier for us as our children get older, we will likely move and transfer our membership to the parish that has weekly TLM and also on all HDOs.

I don’t know much about SSPX or FSSP, so I cannot speak to that. But I know lots of families that have produced vocations, and they were exclusively attending OF Masses (until the new pastor started offering EF Masses, and then they also began assisting at those, too).

I think in general, devout Catholics, no matter their family size, like the option of choosing very reverent Masses, where the priest sets the tone for the parish, encouraging piety and faithfulness. That can be associated with the offering of the EF Mass, but it doesn’t have to be. I have been to some beautifully reverent OF Masses, too. I can appreciate both. I think that is true for a lot of Catholics. 🙂
 
jp54321 said:
I have noticed that people who attend the EF Mass tend to have larger families than those that attend the OF Mass. I have heard that orders like the SSPX and FSSP have seminaries that are full and the SSPX is building a massive new seminary in Virginia. Is there a correlation between large families and vocations? My local OF parish averages 2 children per family.
Click to expand...
For an OF guy, you seem to keep pretty close tabs on SSPX.

I’ll add some more stats for comparison:

SSPX has a total of about 589 priests (as of 2014) worldwide.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_St._Pius_X

Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has 414,313 worldwide as of 2012.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_shortage_in_the_Roman_Catholic_Church

The two groups are so dramatically different in size that it’s really not very useful to compare them. Big groups are qualitatively different than small groups, just as NYC is qualitatively (not just quantitatively) different from a small town.

I also encourage you to read this piece:

ncregister.com/blog/msgr-pope/an-urgent-warning-about-the-future-of-the-traditional-latin-mass

"But as the availability of the Traditional Latin Mass has increased, it seems that a certain ceiling has been reached.

"In my own archdiocese, although we offer the Traditional Latin Mass in five different locations, we’ve never been able to attract more than a total of about a thousand people. That’s only one-half of one percent of the total number of Catholics who attend Mass in this archdiocese each Sunday.

“One of our parishes generously offers a Solemn High Mass once a month on Sunday afternoon, a Mass that I myself have celebrated for over 25 years. But we have gone from seeing the church almost full, to two-thirds full, to now only about one-third full.”

“It seems that a ceiling has been hit. The Traditional Latin Mass appeals to a certain niche group of Catholics, but the number in that group appears to have reached its maximum.”

He tells the story of a parish closure involving a TLM parish and says “This is another situation in which numbers matter. The congregation attending the Traditional Latin Mass in this large urban diocese numbered only about 200. Given the typical pattern of Catholic giving, this is not a number that can sustain any parish, let alone one with an older and larger building.”

We have a TLM from time to time at our nearest parish, and while the TLM community is obviously very vibrant and tight-knit, 200 seems about right–and of course the number of households involved is much smaller than 200.
 
There was a whole thread dedicated to that “ceiling hit” article,
I suggest the OP use the search function and read through that thread for more posts on the topic.
 
Are the SSPX and FSSP in communion with the Church? I’m pretty sure the SSPX is not.

Why would we look to splinter groups as role models to follow? Are we Protestant?
 
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