The future of traditional Catholicism?

[Cat]

These are very interesting points. I never thought of it that way, actually.

(And for much the same reasons, vernacular Masses work very well here in India, where 99% of people are most comfortable in their mother tongue, and Government-based education is of a generally low standard.)

Some people insist that the way to make ignorant people “smarter” is to give them material that is far beyond their understanding, and that this method will “raise them up” to a higher level.

E.g., instead of teaching children nursery rhymes and singing games, teach them Bach and Mozart. E.g., instead of giving children reading primers about boys and girls, give them Shakespeare.

I totally disagree. I believe strongly in a “precept upon precept” method of teaching. I didn’t start learning music by learning the 3rd Movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I learned “Stepping Up, Stepping Down, Then a Skip,” and that little song took me 3 weeks to learn. But I learned it well, and only then did my teacher move me on to the NEXT song in the book, with new skills.

I think this “precept upon precept” training is especially important in our faith.

I think one reason why so many Catholics, especially middle-aged and elderly Catholics, are so poorly-catechized, so completely unable to articulate what they believe and explain why they believe it, is because they didn’t start at the very beginning and learn the basics of Christianity.

They may have memorized a Catechism and be able to recite theology, but they have no systematic understanding of that theology and how it applies to real life.

They were hauled to an adult-level Mass from the time they were babies, and listened to a language that they didn’t know, and referred to a missal that they couldn’t read yet, and heard songs in the same foreign language which, even when translated, were about the very deepest concepts of our faith that even the wisest adults in history have struggled to understand.

I realize that to intelligent people who have studied and mastered not only basic Christianity, but advanced theology, much of the OF Mass must seem like baby food. I sympathize.

But…Truly intelligent people will recognize and gracefully accept that many of the people sitting around them ARE spiritual babies, and must eat baby food and grow up first before they are able to eat and digest “meat.”

Truly intelligent people will stop insisting that these babies be force-fed “meat” even though they aren’t ready for it and will in all likelihood, throw it up.

And I think that truly intelligent people will stop pining for what is unrealistic and instead, find other ways outside of their personally frustrating Mass experience to feed their highly-developed brains and souls; e.g., personal study, pilgrimages, an EF Mass or a higher-level OF Mass, recordings of music that they consider “good,” a faith group that encourages intellectual study of the faith (e.g., Opus Dei), advanced classes offered at universities, online, or by their diocese, etc.

 

[RPRPsych]

Some people insist that the way to make ignorant people “smarter” is to give them material that is far beyond their understanding, and that this method will “raise them up” to a higher level.

E.g., instead of teaching children nursery rhymes and singing games, teach them Bach and Mozart. E.g., instead of giving children reading primers about boys and girls, give them Shakespeare.

I totally disagree. I believe strongly in a “precept upon precept” method of teaching. I didn’t start learning music by learning the 3rd Movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I learned “Stepping Up, Stepping Down, Then a Skip,” and that little song took me 3 weeks to learn. But I learned it well, and only then did my teacher move me on to the NEXT song in the book, with new skills.

I think this “precept upon precept” training is especially important in our faith.

I think one reason why so many Catholics, especially middle-aged and elderly Catholics, are so poorly-catechized, so completely unable to articulate what they believe and explain why they believe it, is because they didn’t start at the very beginning and learn the basics of Christianity.

They may have memorized a Catechism and be able to recite theology, but they have no systematic understanding of that theology and how it applies to real life.

They were hauled to an adult-level Mass from the time they were babies, and listened to a language that they didn’t know, and referred to a missal that they couldn’t read yet, and heard songs in the same foreign language which, even when translated, were about the very deepest concepts of our faith that even the wisest adults in history have struggled to understand.

I realize that to intelligent people who have studied and mastered not only basic Christianity, but advanced theology, much of the OF Mass must seem like baby food. I sympathize.

But…Truly intelligent people will recognize and gracefully accept that many of the people sitting around them ARE spiritual babies, and must eat baby food and grow up first before they are able to eat and digest “meat.”

Truly intelligent people will stop insisting that these babies be force-fed “meat” even though they aren’t ready for it and will in all likelihood, throw it up.

And I think that truly intelligent people will stop pining for what is unrealistic and instead, find other ways outside of their personally frustrating Mass experience to feed their highly-developed brains and souls; e.g., personal study, pilgrimages, an EF Mass or a higher-level OF Mass, recordings of music that they consider “good,” a faith group that encourages intellectual study of the faith (e.g., Opus Dei), advanced classes offered at universities, online, or by their diocese, etc.

And I know exactly what you mean about the catechesis: I started “catching up” only about five years ago.

 

[EphelDuath]

Some people insist that the way to make ignorant people “smarter” is to give them material that is far beyond their understanding, and that this method will “raise them up” to a higher level.

…

I think this “precept upon precept” training is especially important in our faith.

I think one reason why so many Catholics, especially middle-aged and elderly Catholics, are so poorly-catechized, so completely unable to articulate what they believe and explain why they believe it, is because they didn’t start at the very beginning and learn the basics of Christianity.

They may have memorized a Catechism and be able to recite theology, but they have no systematic understanding of that theology and how it applies to real life.

They were hauled to an adult-level Mass from the time they were babies, and listened to a language that they didn’t know, and referred to a missal that they couldn’t read yet, and heard songs in the same foreign language which, even when translated, were about the very deepest concepts of our faith that even the wisest adults in history have struggled to understand.

I realize that to intelligent people who have studied and mastered not only basic Christianity, but advanced theology, much of the OF Mass must seem like baby food. I sympathize.

But…Truly intelligent people will recognize and gracefully accept that many of the people sitting around them ARE spiritual babies, and must eat baby food and grow up first before they are able to eat and digest “meat.”

Truly intelligent people will stop insisting that these babies be force-fed “meat” even though they aren’t ready for it and will in all likelihood, throw it up.

And I think that truly intelligent people will stop pining for what is unrealistic and instead, find other ways outside of their personally frustrating Mass experience to feed their highly-developed brains and souls; e.g., personal study, pilgrimages, an EF Mass or a higher-level OF Mass, recordings of music that they consider “good,” a faith group that encourages intellectual study of the faith (e.g., Opus Dei), advanced classes offered at universities, online, or by their diocese, etc.

I’m quite amazed that what you wrote in the first half of this post, has lead you to the conclusions of the second half. Perhaps you can explain to me how the OF, which is largely stripped of its rituals and symbolism compared to the EF, is spiritual “baby food”? Most people attending the OF are under this false notion that just hearing the words in your own language is all you need to understand it – meanwhile, half of Catholics in the U.S. don’t even know that the Church teaches the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, let alone how many actually believe it.

As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again. Showing is better than telling. Medieval priests didn’t try to teach the village to read Latin so they could read the Vulgate themselves; they commissioned stained glass windows to show the great stories of Holy Scripture, the “Poor Man’s Bible”. When I first became Catholic, I didn’t know that Holy Mass is a Sacrifice. I found out the first time I attended a Traditional Latin Mass, when I saw the priest heavily incensing the altar, genuflecting when elevating the Host amidst ancient chant sung from the choir loft like the voices of angels. I didn’t understand a word that was being said, I had no idea what was going on because I was helplessly lost in my accompaniment booklet. But I KNEW something sacred had taken place, not a mere ritual gone through the motions: because the celebrant demonstrated it. I couldn’t hear (and even if I could, tell you what it meant) the priest say “hoc est enim corpus meum”, but I sure as heck couldn’t have told you what it meant when a priest at the OF said “This is my Body”.

This idea that the OF is better than the EF because people can understand it is absolute caca. There have been far too many saints in history that were totally illiterate for me to believe that.

Cat, you seem to insinuate that it’s only people with “advanced theology” that understand and appreciate the EF. I find this very condescending: that it’s the duty of we people in our ivory towers with mounds of education to keep things simple and understandable for the ignorant masses. I have much more faith in common folk than you do. And it’s common folk that I see when I go to EF, not rich and educated snobs. It reminds me of a post by Fr Z on the subject:

Some years ago, when in my church in Italy I regularly had sung Novus Ordo Masses in Latin, with Gregorian chant and polyphony by Palestrina and Giovanelli, I was accused by liberal priests that I was not allowing the poor and the simple people to “participate”. That was absurd, of course. The idiot argument ran that the poor and the simple (a typically liberal condescension) didn’t appreciate or understand chant or polyphony. Therefore, using that sort of music was somehow oppressive. (My retort was that they though that beauty was only for the wealthy elite. Keep in mind that those clerics were probably Communists.)

The fact of the matter was, however, that the church was more and more crowded on the days we had the glorious music, as word got around, by precisely the simple and poor people of the neighborhood. It helped that the choir was outstanding, as is typical of small Italian towns.

I reject the liberal elitist attitude that the simple people – down there around their liberal ankles – must be fed a stream of bland pabulum, unworthy of sacred liturgical worship, beneath our true Catholic identity.

wdtprs.com/blog/2013/09/exploding-the-canard-of-a-dichotomy-between-liturgical-solemnity-and-ministry-to-the-poor/

 

[EphelDuath]

By the way, check out some of the comments on the above post by Fr Z.

mamajen says:
26 September 2013 at 9:41 am
We had similar discussions in architecture school. Modernism stripped buildings of their character and meaning. Social housing projects using the new “style” emphasizing function over form failed miserably (probably, in part, because the function they were pushing for was engineered and unnatural for human beings). Now we have people attempting to copy and paste history and meaning onto new buildings, and that never quite works. There was a reason for every little detail in a medieval cathedral. Much of the ornamentation was intended specifically for the poor and illiterate, so they could learn in a visual way even if they couldn’t understand the words.

Speaking for myself, I understand very little Latin, but a beautifully sung mass can still send chills up my spine. I don’t have a lot, but I have a keen sense of, and appreciation for, quality in all things. And I can’t stand condescension.

Late for heaven says:
26 September 2013 at 10:18 am
As someone who has been poor all my life I heartily concur. In my desperately poor childhood the church was a haven, a place to feed my starving soul on Beauty. All around me at home was threadbare and cheap and chaotic but through the Church I could escape all that oppressive ugliness.

I had an argument recently with my lapsed leftist son. He was repeating the trope that the Church should sell all her art and other beautiful things to feed the poor. I almost shouted at him that all that patrimony is MINE, all that beauty belongs to ME, because I am Catholic. I am poor and cannot buy my own pretties to hide away for my own private pleasure. This sense of corporate ownership in some of the best artwork in history gives me a sense of dignity that rarely graces the lives of the poor. I may not be able to point to my palatial home or precious heirlooms, but my mite contributes to the most beautiful artwork in the world, art that adorns the Kingdom of God on earth.

La Sandia says:
26 September 2013 at 11:24 am
Well said Father. You could also mention that no less a friend to the poor and marginalized than Dorothy Day was supposedly quite traditional in her devotional practices and piety–the Rosary, Adoration, even wearing a mantilla after such practices had fallen to the wayside for most Catholics. I’m not familiar with every aspect of her life but from what I understand she would be quite surprised to hear people say that there is a contradiction between traditional expressions of the Faith and care for the poor and oppressed.

 

[GangGreen]

I think I remember reading about someone once saying (I can’t remember if it was a priest, pope or what) that we go about our faith in almost a programmed way at times… Especially priests who are so learned about the faith and know all the little details and rituals. However, sometimes to look at the poor, uneducated, and lowly and to see the faith that exudes from them is astonishing and humbling.

It is typically the highly educated who desire things that can be understood, it doesn’t matter if that’s in matters of faith or worldly things. They want to be able to hear it and see it. The educated are the ones who dislike that which they cannot understand. Just take a look at stats which show atheism between people who are highly educated vs. those who are not as much so. The uneducated are the types who tend to look beyond what they can understand, see, hear, what they’ve learned. They don’t need to understand every word of the Mass to feel the effects spiritually. The highly educated tend to become blind to these things.

So to say that only the “elite” prefer the EF to me is just wrong. I would say that it’s actually the opposite. Those who desire beauty, mystery, magnificence, heavy symbolism, among others prefer the beauty of Catholic tradition. They don’t need to understand it tangibly because they learn to understand it spiritually. Those who are the well educated “elite” prefer to have something that they can understand in a more tangible way.

 

[TimothyH]

I would say that the United States is one of those countries that benefits from a vernacular Mass.

Many of us continue fantasizing that we are the best-educated country in the world. But over and over, testing among young people demonstrates that we are actually pretty stupid.

Our average reading level is 6th grade (the average newspaper, but not the New York Times, which is too advanced for most of us). We still have a fairly-large segment of the population that is illiterate.

More importantly, even among educated people, there is a decided dearth of knowledge and lack of appreciation and respect for history, music, art, literature, culture outside of the U.S., and foreign languages.

Although citizens of many other countries are fluent in languages other than their own, most Americans know very little of any language other than English, and many of us have a hard time understanding the dialects of our own fellow citizens in different parts of this country!

To the frustration of intellectuals and those who are more advanced in their education, what all this means is that we must cater to the lowest common denominator, or we will lose them. They simply won’t comprehend and they will walk away. The music will be “above them”, and any references that require a knowledge of history, literature, culture, geography, etc. will go right over their heads, and possibly even be misinterpreted.

I don’t see this changing in the U.S. as long as the majority of the people attend public schools and as long as we allow our children to spend so much time playing online and video games. I think people in the U.S. will get even stupider.

Perhaps this will drive a return to the EF Mass, as it was used for centuries among peoples who were mostly illiterate.

But more than likely, the OF Mass will continue to be “simplified” for the sake of those who are victims of being born in the U.S. in this time and Age of Ignorance.

I think that “traditional Catholicism” requires more knowledge and understanding than most Americans possess. Also, I think that an EF Mass requires more “work” from people, and nowadays, most of us are too impatient (part of our stupidity!) to do that work. Even in the OF Mass, most people do not even bother to pick up the hymnal and do the “work” of following along, and singing–well, the number of those who actually sing the songs is getting smaller as more and more people graduate from school without knowing how to read a line of music.

It would be wonderful to see an intellectual revival beginning and continuing in the Catholic Church (or anywhere, for that matter). I do think that many Catholic primary and secondary schools provide a higher level of education than the public schools. Unfortunately, many Catholic parish schools do not have enough space for the children in their own parish, and certainly can’t admit non-Catholics who are seeking a better education. And with the cost of college going beyond the means of most American families, it is unlikely that a majority of them will choose private Catholic colleges over cheaper community colleges and state universities.

JMO, all.

This post is breathtaking in it’s intellectual superiority.

To actually come out and state that traditionalism is for the smart people and that the rest of the US population is better served by worship which caters to their stupidity is the hight of arrogance.

I’ve heard many things said about traditionalists and mainstream Catholics but this takes the prize.

-Tim-

 

[ProVobis]

Those who desire beauty, mystery, magnificence, heavy symbolism, among others prefer the beauty of Catholic tradition.

I agree. I think there is a high correlation between lovers of the Latin Mass and classical music and fine arts in general. Pope Benedict did refer to it as the “treasure” of the church.

 

[JustaServant]

This post is breathtaking in it’s intellectual superiority.

To actually come out and state that traditionalism is for the smart people and that the rest of the US population is better served by worship which caters to their stupidity is the hight of arrogance.

I’ve heard many things said about traditionalists and mainstream Catholics but this takes the prize.

-Tim-

Agreed.
And it feeds into the Protestant fundamentalist argument that the Church “kept people in ignorance for centuries” until they came along with thier novel interpretation of the Bible and “set them free”.
My Irish ancestors, forced into poverty by the British had only the Church to turn to. They may not have been someone’s definition of “intellectual”, but we have no right to judge thier spirituality based soley on the fact that the Mass at that time was in Latin and not in the Irish tongue.

 

[JustaServant]

I hate to disappoint but I’ve seen EF Masses disappear after the initial enthusiasm runs out. It also doesn’t help that the OF is being celebrated increasingly in a traditional manner. There’s probably growth in the EF but it’s not explosive and there’s a fairly low ceiling. One EF Mass for every 100 OF Masses seems to be roughly what the market can bare. And while you do see young families at the EF, you still can’t escape the fact that most are older.

OF Masses are being celebrated in a traditional manner because:

1. Pope Benedict made changes that were in line with the EF of the Mass, in the venacular.
2. It’s no longer the 1970s. Despite what more radical traditionalists claim, liturgical abuse is not as rampant as they claim.
3. The EF Mass will remain the EF Mass until Christ comes. That will never change.

 

[sebastian1213]

I would say that the United States is one of those countries that benefits from a vernacular Mass.

Many of us continue fantasizing that we are the best-educated country in the world. But over and over, testing among young people demonstrates that we are actually pretty stupid.

Our average reading level is 6th grade (the average newspaper, but not the New York Times, which is too advanced for most of us). We still have a fairly-large segment of the population that is illiterate.

More importantly, even among educated people, there is a decided dearth of knowledge and lack of appreciation and respect for history, music, art, literature, culture outside of the U.S., and foreign languages.

Although citizens of many other countries are fluent in languages other than their own, most Americans know very little of any language other than English, and many of us have a hard time understanding the dialects of our own fellow citizens in different parts of this country!

To the frustration of intellectuals and those who are more advanced in their education, what all this means is that we must cater to the lowest common denominator, or we will lose them. They simply won’t comprehend and they will walk away. The music will be “above them”, and any references that require a knowledge of history, literature, culture, geography, etc. will go right over their heads, and possibly even be misinterpreted.

I don’t see this changing in the U.S. as long as the majority of the people attend public schools and as long as we allow our children to spend so much time playing online and video games. I think people in the U.S. will get even stupider.

Perhaps this will drive a return to the EF Mass, as it was used for centuries among peoples who were mostly illiterate.

But more than likely, the OF Mass will continue to be “simplified” for the sake of those who are victims of being born in the U.S. in this time and Age of Ignorance.

I think that “traditional Catholicism” requires more knowledge and understanding than most Americans possess. Also, I think that an EF Mass requires more “work” from people, and nowadays, most of us are too impatient (part of our stupidity!) to do that work. Even in the OF Mass, most people do not even bother to pick up the hymnal and do the “work” of following along, and singing–well, the number of those who actually sing the songs is getting smaller as more and more people graduate from school without knowing how to read a line of music.

It would be wonderful to see an intellectual revival beginning and continuing in the Catholic Church (or anywhere, for that matter). I do think that many Catholic primary and secondary schools provide a higher level of education than the public schools. Unfortunately, many Catholic parish schools do not have enough space for the children in their own parish, and certainly can’t admit non-Catholics who are seeking a better education. And with the cost of college going beyond the means of most American families, it is unlikely that a majority of them will choose private Catholic colleges over cheaper community colleges and state universities.

JMO, all.

Very strong words which cut right to the heart of the matter.

 

[Cat]

This post is breathtaking in it’s intellectual superiority.

To actually come out and state that traditionalism is for the smart people and that the rest of the US population is better served by worship which caters to their stupidity is the hight of arrogance.

I’ve heard many things said about traditionalists and mainstream Catholics but this takes the prize.

-Tim-

So you don’t agree with the “precept upon precept” principle?

 

[Oneofthewomen]

Very strong words which cut right to the heart of the matter.

I agree and I don’t think that Cat meant to come off as “intellectually superior”, but I will let her respond to that.

I do think she has some very valid points about the education system in this country, and how it effects the Church and society, especially in the US, in the grand scheme of things.

 

[Cat]

I agree and I don’t think that Cat meant to come off as “intellectually superior”, but I will let her respond to that.

I do think she has some very valid points about the education system in this country, and how it effects the Church and society, especially in the US, in the grand scheme of things.

I couldn’t come across as intellectually superior if I tried.

I’m only trying to get a grip on reality in the United States.

Keep in mind that just because YOU get it, and just because YOU sense it, doesn’t mean that others do.

 

[YoungTradCath]

I think that Cat’s post is perfectly fair enough. I disagree with some of what she says, but I nevertheless agree with other things, albeit I come to those conclusions from a different perspective and for different reasons.

I essentially agree with Cat’s assessment of the real situation as it exists today in the United States, but I fundamentally disagree with her on a good reaction to the situation, or how to deal with it.

---

Side note: I don’t think it’s uncharitable, immoral, etc., to make personal assessments of other peoples’ intelligence if it is done for a valid reason, and I think understanding sociological realities is a valid reason.

 

[Cat]

I think that Cat’s post is perfectly fair enough. I disagree with some of what she says, but I nevertheless agree with other things, albeit I come to those conclusions from a different perspective and for different reasons.

I essentially agree with Cat’s assessment of the real situation as it exists today in the United States, but I fundamentally disagree with her on a good reaction to the situation, or how to deal with it.

---

Side note: I don’t think it’s uncharitable, immoral, etc., to make personal assessments of other peoples’ intelligence if it is done for a valid reason, and I think understanding sociological realities is a valid reason.

What part of my “reaction” to the situation do you disagree with?

Here’s what I said: "Perhaps this will drive a return to the EF Mass, as it was used for centuries among peoples who were mostly illiterate.

But more than likely, the OF Mass will continue to be “simplified” for the sake of those who are victims of being born in the U.S. in this time and Age of Ignorance."

I don’t think I phrased the second sentence well. I’ll try to clarify.

I don’t think that the OF Mass will become more and more “simple.” That’s not what I meant, and I apologize if that’s the impression that my words gave.

I think that the OF Mass will continue to be offered pretty much the way it is now, using the same liturgy, with a little chant and more hymns, a little Latin and more vernacular, and the same level of symbolic gestures and postures that we see now. I think we’ll see incense offered only occasionally, as so many people seem to suffer allergies to it. And I think that unless there are some immediate actions taken, that we will see less and less organ, since so few young people are learning to play. The organ will be replaced by piano and guitar because many young people are learning to play these instruments. I don’t see acapella singing used on a regular basis, since so many people in the U.S. are becoming tone death and can’t hear a note and match it.

There are Catholics who, at least according to what they say here on CAF, find all this “too simple” for their level of understanding, and they would like to see an OF Mass with more complexity, more Latin, more chant, more symbolism, more challenging homilies–in other words, a liturgy more similar to the EF Mass.

But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think that young priests who try to add too many “traditions” to the OF will meet with resistance. JMO, and that’s what the OP was asking for.

 

[zab]

I’m quite amazed that what you wrote in the first half of this post, has lead you to the conclusions of the second half. Perhaps you can explain to me how the OF, which is largely stripped of its rituals and symbolism compared to the EF, is spiritual “baby food”? Most people attending the OF are under this false notion that just hearing the words in your own language is all you need to understand it – meanwhile, half of Catholics in the U.S. don’t even know that the Church teaches the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, let alone how many actually believe it.

As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again. Showing is better than telling. Medieval priests didn’t try to teach the village to read Latin so they could read the Vulgate themselves; they commissioned stained glass windows to show the great stories of Holy Scripture, the “Poor Man’s Bible”. When I first became Catholic, I didn’t know that Holy Mass is a Sacrifice. I found out the first time I attended a Traditional Latin Mass, when I saw the priest heavily incensing the altar, genuflecting when elevating the Host amidst ancient chant sung from the choir loft like the voices of angels. I didn’t understand a word that was being said, I had no idea what was going on because I was helplessly lost in my accompaniment booklet. But I KNEW something sacred had taken place, not a mere ritual gone through the motions: because the celebrant demonstrated it. I couldn’t hear (and even if I could, tell you what it meant) the priest say “hoc est enim corpus meum”, but I sure as heck couldn’t have told you what it meant when a priest at the OF said “This is my Body”.

This idea that the OF is better than the EF because people can understand it is absolute caca. There have been far too many saints in history that were totally illiterate for me to believe that.

Cat, you seem to insinuate that it’s only people with “advanced theology” that understand and appreciate the EF. I find this very condescending: that it’s the duty of we people in our ivory towers with mounds of education to keep things simple and understandable for the ignorant masses. I have much more faith in common folk than you do. And it’s common folk that I see when I go to EF, not rich and educated snobs. It reminds me of a post by Fr Z on the subject:

wdtprs.com/blog/2013/09/exploding-the-canard-of-a-dichotomy-between-liturgical-solemnity-and-ministry-to-the-poor/

What a load of caca .

 

[GangGreen]

OF Masses are being celebrated in a traditional manner because:

1. Pope Benedict made changes that were in line with the EF of the Mass, in the venacular.
2. It’s no longer the 1970s. Despite what more radical traditionalists claim, liturgical abuse is not as rampant as they claim.
   3. The EF Mass will remain the EF Mass until Christ comes. That will never change.

I’m glad you know what the future brings .

No one knows the future. Could you be right? Certainly, but maybe 25 or 50 years from now the EF will become the OF again or maybe the OF will change and become more of a hybrid between the OF and the EF. Or something else. None of us know.

I’m sure if you asked someone in 1920 what the Mass would look like in 50 years, they wouldn’t dream in a million years of what occurred in the 1970s.

 

[otjm]

Sorry for my fail quote job earlier.

My point wasn’t that I think FSSP seminarians outnumber diocesan seminarians, not sure how you came to that.

Numerically, yes it is small, but proportionally, that is ridiculously big. And if things continue on that course, then Fr. Z’s prediction absolutely will come true.

And it is not as if it is only FSSP seminarians that are interested in the TLM, I’ve been to my diocesan seminary, and there is a lot of interest in it there, as well. This is not to mention some anecdotes, like that New York priest that was the only one ordained in his class that year chose to say a TLM for his first Mass.

One half of a percent is not ridiculously big. it is exceedingly small. What we have is anecdotal information being repeated without any serious verification, and then boosted by emotional wishing and hoping. It is great to love the EF, and it is great to be enthusiastic about it. The reality is that it is extraordinary, it is a very small minority of the number of Masses which are said on a weekend, and there is no evidence other than anecdotal comments which would give any evidence of any significant increase. In fact, no one really stops to define what the term “significant” means.

I don’t mean to come across as the Grinch; . Every additional EF Mass that is held in a new parish is one more than was there before. For the sake of example, let’s call 15% of parishes holding an EF Mass each weekend significant. That would be over 2600 parishes; currently there are 400+. The issue is much less how much enthusiasm there is “in the seminary”; the issue is how many men are being ordained who still are focused on saying the EF? There is no credible evidence for that, only anecdotal. And anecdotal evidence and two dollars will get you somewhere on the local mass transit.

 

[ServusHumilis]

I just learned tonight that in my area there’s now a third parish offering the TLM that I’ll have to go to soon. Things are looking good I’d say!

 

[Lawrence178]

One half of a percent is not ridiculously big.

Err, yes, yes it is. Again, proportionally. You really don’t think it is even a tiny, little bit remarkable that the FSSP drew 16 new aspirants to the priesthood this past year from 50 parishes when Philadelphia only drew 8 from 267? And Philadelphia is a healthy diocese as far as dioceses go when compared to ones like Vancouver, which doesn’t ordain any priests at all many years.

For the third time, I’m not arguing that FSSP seminarians are numerically greater, so please stop acting like that is what I am trying to say. I’m trying to say that trads like this are doing something very right, and in the future, it will continue to do things right and everything trad will grow, and at a greater rate than other parts of the Church. Fr. Z is at least in part right (though I think his prediction is very optimistic).