The Generational Divide

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I’ve heard that exact phrase used myself from my kids’ friends.
 
My mom is an older baby boomer now 69 so she grew with the Latin mass and currently attends it. I am an older millenial(35) and would like to attend Latin mass, but I work all day Sunday(I’m in healthcare) so can’t currently. Someday soon though…
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
I actually think it’s often the young teenagers who are looking for something edgy and Lifeteen won’t do who like TLM. Right now, that’s Gen Z.

Millennial and Gen X are generally the PJPII generation who tend towards less charismatic, but more spirited worship and care about the rules.

Millenials generally have time, flexibility and money so they seem to be the more likely ones to show up.
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In my experience, it’s mostly the young people that haven’t experienced true traditional liturgy that seek out the LifeTeen type of stuff. I know of many young men (teens to early twenties) who have a love for tradition and the EF. Also, any time I have been to an EF Mass, a large portion of the people in attendance were Young Families, where the parents are in their mid to late 20’s.
 
I would love to see some actual statistics about this. What I personally have noticed in the areas that I have been is that the areas closer to the chancery (I don’t know how else to describe it.) of a diocese seem to have more EF Masses.
 
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Yeah, I think some dioceses have run these numbers – I remember seeing reports on this before, so I should try to find those again.

This was also based off of your own anecdotal perspective. Some people here of course haven’t noticed that at all and have even seen the opposite. Statistics would be great to include. I’ll see what I can find.
 
YoungApologist3 said:
I would love to see some actual statistics about this. What I personally have noticed in the areas that I have been is that the areas closer to the chancery (I don’t know how else to describe it.) of a diocese seem to have more EF Masses.
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I don’t have access to statistics, but living in St. Louis, I would be able to confirm this at least in my area. We have at least one parish that offers Latin Mass on a regular (weekly) basis. We have an abundance of parishes that offer non-english speaking masses (spanish, polish).
 
There are definitely separate groups which I probably should have divided up into sub categories, but I was probably careless.

Of course I’m referring to Milennials who are devoutly practicing, not dissidents. (I’m not calling your kids dissidents, I’m just making sure that I’m being clear). I also know a few around my age that think TLM is too out their for them.
 
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gcshapero said:
There are definitely separate groups which I probably should have divided up into sub categories, but I was probably careless.

Of course I’m referring to Milennials who are devoutly practicing, not dissidents. (I’m not calling your kids dissidents, I’m just making sure that I’m being clear). I also know a few around my age that think TLM is too out their for them.
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Most of the former teens that were in Lifeteen I’d consider devout today. There are even a few priests and religious sisters. None find any love of TLM. My friend was in seminary. All of the US-born candidates under 30 had been through lifeteen in their youth. Now, there could be some in more traditional semanaries but none of them were interested in the TLM as more than a historic celebration.
 
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I think that every generation tries to do something different than the one before. However, I have not seen any dichotomy about who likes what kind of Mass. True, some boomers like the modern ways, but the younger boomers were brought up with that whereas older boomers were brought up with the Tridentine Mass. I was brought up with the Tridentine Mass until I was a young teen. I don’t want to bring back the Tridentine Mass exclusively. The only thing I miss about the Mass in Latin is the quiet (and yes this is a big thing), but I’d rather participate in Mass in my own language or cultural background language.
 
I think its more of an “tradition” vs “novelty” split. The reason it sometimes takes on a generational form is because the grayheads are trying to hold onto the novelty of their youth.
 
Also, I think some younger people see the EF as more reverent somehow because it’s exotic to them.

Boomers can remember hastily mumbled Latin Masses with men hanging out in the back to slip out and catch a smoke.

And “veiling” is not a concept for the laity. Women just covered their heads with whatever was fashionable, like hats or mantilla; or handy, like Kleenex.
 
JulianN said:
Also, I think some younger people see the EF as more reverent somehow because it’s exotic to them.
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Where I live, they are. I haven’t ever attended an irreverent or hastily said EF Mass. (To be fair, I can count on one hand how many EF Masses I have attended, because the closest is over an hour away.) In my experience, it’s often the same priests that say EF Masses and call for a more traditional liturgy overall. (Again, in my area,) The baby boomers want more “spirit of Vatican II” (in name only, not actually what V2 called for at all) in the liturgy, and don’t like the EF.
 
It’s a bit like a pendulum. Think about it like the president.

8 years left, 8 years right.
It happens with popes too, conservative to less conservative
great turn one way, great turn the opposite.
 
Yes, because the EF is the rarity. When it was the ordinary form, it was not said any more reverently (or not—because I’ve never experienced an irreverent OF Mass) than any other Mass.

Latin is not a sacred language—we forget it was the vernacular of the early Church in the Roman Empire.
 
Hereiam said:
My personal theory is the millenials you speak of (which i dont think are the majority) prefer the EF because they view it as retro-chic.
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I agree. I also would note that 50 years old is likely way past the end of the “baby boom” at this point. The boomers are more like late 50s to late 70s. A 50-year-old today would have been an 80s Gen X-er, which (as Johnny Slash used to say in the 80s) was “totally different head, man. Totally.”

On the subject of the boomers, the old hippie social justice types who want everything to be loosey-goosey and communal and social justice-y and have a big plain room with folding chairs and badly made felt banners instead of a decent looking church with some realistic statues of Mary and Joseph…yes those people can be a royal pain in the anatomy and I didn’t enjoy their pervasive schtick when I was back in college in the 80s either. Because of this mindset, a whole lot of us younger Catholic college students would skip the Newman Center, which in those days tended to be overrun with people who maybe didn’t even attend the college but went on a lot of anti-nuclear protest marches, and if we went to Mass at all, we’d go a mile up the street to the old historic Italian church in the middle of Little Italy (which is still there looking much the same) with the little old Italian ladies and the little old Italian pastor and old stained glass windows and an organ.

On the subject of the millennials, the ones who are all into EF today are indeed into “retro Mass” and are basically the Catholic equivalent of hipsters who want to do something different from what the old people do (and oftentimes be as annoying to older people as possible while they’re doing it). The whole reason the boomers wanted to change the Mass was because THEY wanted to do something different from what their parents and grands did. So the cycle just repeats. The trad millennials’ kids or grandkids will probably rediscover the felt banners, bongos and Kumbaya.

There are also a whole lot of young people - I see entire churches full of them at the parishes with big Lifeteen groups - who might like a fancy Mass once in a while but most of the time are content with just going to the OF at their parish where they can wear their soccer uniform and see their friends and have pizza after the Mass.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
On the subject of the millennials, the ones who are all into EF today are indeed into “retro Mass” and are basically the Catholic equivalent of hipsters who want to do something different from what the old people do (and oftentimes be as annoying to older people as possible while they’re doing it)
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yes I tend to agree here. It’s retro chic and cool b/c it’s non-conformist. I attneded a TLM parish for about 7 mths several years ago…at first it was a breath of fresh air (along with a hefty dose of incense) but after a while it became stifling. I don’t speak Latin, I don’t do well kneeling for long stretches of time and I didn’t like the 50s time warp thing they had going on. But I discovered my love for headcoverings and that I really was Eastern at heart…made the decision then and there to stay in the East.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
On the subject of the millennials, the ones who are all into EF today are indeed into “retro Mass” and are basically the Catholic equivalent of hipsters who want to do something different from what the old people do (and oftentimes be as annoying to older people as possible while they’re doing it). The whole reason the boomers wanted to change the Mass was because THEY wanted to do something different from what their parents and grands did. So the cycle just repeats. The trad millennials’ kids or grandkids will probably rediscover the felt banners, bongos and Kumbaya.
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Which is why the Mass went through radical change every generation in the last 2000 yea-

Wait… it only did that in the 1960s.
 
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