Is there a good site with statistics for the growth and availability of the Traditional Latin Mass in these USA?
We know it is happening.
Do we have numbers?
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Father,
Here is one I’ve bookmarked: https://www.latinmassdir.org/
I’ve checked my diocesan parish, which has replaced six weekly Novus Ordo masses with TLMs in the last year, and it shows up as correct on the above site. I’m not sure about statistics though. It could be better with maps and spatial datasets with underlying attribute tables that can be queried to create more specific maps and tables. A GIS professional, with additional website development abilities, who has more time to invest in such an endeavor than I do, is what is needed to give us what we are hoping for, which would be a nice website with thoroughly attributed spatial datasets representing the past and current state of the Traditional Catholic movement with attributes such as dates, addresses, days of the week, number of masses, diocese, state, country, etc… which can be queried to produce specific visual mapping products to support the knowledge and spreading of the TLM and other elements of the traditional Catholic faith. I know I would love to see and use such a site.
Pax Christi
Father Z,
I’ve not found a site with comprehensive or well-documented statistics (despite numerous searches), but a good source for raw material on churches offering the TLM is Traditio, the Traditional Roman Catholic Network (http://www.traditio.com/). They’ve been producing an annual “Official Traditional Catholic Directory” since 1994. Unfortunately, it only provides the churches (by State and Canadian Province) that offer the TLM and does not contain information on the number of attendees. Hope this helps.
HFL
Until a couple of years ago (when it stopped being updated), the Ecclesia Dei Coalition would show a bar chart of the number of canonical parishes celebrating the Traditional Mass each year. As to the percentage, I personally can only refer to research done in three dioceses (Arlington VA, Cincinnati OH, and Cleveland OH), but the percentage of the faithful attending the Traditional Mass has (again, on the basis of what little research has been done to my knowledge) does not reach one percent, let alone exceeds it.
Several months ago I heard about the site that Servant links to. When I checked it out, our Mass was not listed. So I logged in and added the information.
So I think there may be other Masses not listed!
If you are involved it a Latin Mass community, go check to see if yours is listed. If not, either do it yourself or ask with someone who has the authority.
(I don’t know if I had the authority but there isn’t a lot of “advertising” about our Mass going on locally, so I have been doing it informally.)
I found that Traditio had numerous mistakes for the Masses in our generality… wrong addresses, missing Masses, etc. Yet, it shows the Masses of groups that are not in full communion with Rome! We have a Mass location that has been ongoing for nearly 13 years that does not show up.
The Latin Mass Directory linked by Servant, however, seems to be mostly up-to-date, at least for our area.
If there was a directory that included statistics hosted on the wdtprs.com website, that would drive even more traffic to the site. Just saying…
The COALITION IN SUPPORT OF ECCLESIA DEI directory shows it being updated as of Jan 10 2020.
http://www.ecclesiadei.org/masses.cfm
This is a terrific, user-based site for TLM times: http://wikimissa.missafr.odns.fr/yeswiki/?ListeEtatsUnis
Of course, it’s only as updated as users make it.
Thanks for the link, codycarver.
The listing is not up to date for my area, so I’ll see what I can do about that.
The FSSP seminary in Denton is full. And Clear Creek does not at the moment have room for postulants.
There is a new app, described here, https://fssp.com/imass-app-launches-world-map-of-latin-mass-locations/ , that has maps, with the locations reviewed by Fr. Fryar (FSSP). The maps apparently include Latin Masses that are also not FSSP.
One approach would be to find a web site that stores old copies of web sites and see if an old copy of the Ecclesia Dei list is available for comparison. Or perhaps one of our number had occasion to save a copy many years ago and still has it?
Or, you could give them a call @ 773-284-7785. I believe the accuracy of these sites is dependent on the input from those providing, or assisting at these masses.
I think that ideally there would be some sort of count much as bird watchers pick a certain date to count the bird population. Ideally this would be in the Spring or Fall to negate the effects of bad weather and also the summer vacation drop off (people traveling and often having to attend the NO at their destination). Perhaps it would need to be done over a month which also accounts for those places that dont have Mass every Sunday. Not sure how this would be coordinated as there are so many different groups- FSSP, SSPX, diocesan etc.
Praise God that western Ohio will have a Sunday Latin Mass! St. Joseph Church in Egypt, OH (Minster, OH mailing address), will begin an afternoon (4pm) Sunday Mass on the second and fourth sundays of each month. This area is dubbed the Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches and is a rural area with a heavy German Catholic population going back to the original settlements.
https://liturgyguy.com/
Brian Williams at Liturgy Guy has been compiling Latin Mass Statistics.
I’ll second what Andrew Saucci said, which had been my own independent take. One can use the “Wayback Machine” at the Internet Archive (https://web.archive.org/) to find old cached copies of web sites, including the Ecclesia Dei list linked above, which is helpfully already formatted as a table. Copying that table into an Excel spreadsheet, one can apply various formulae to do some analysis. I don’t have a tremendous amount of spare time at the moment and didn’t do anything sophisticated or carefully proofread the input data table (as they say, garbage in garbage out), but I was able to come up with some quick and dirty preliminary results. Again, consider these numbers approximate and take them with a grain of salt.
Comparing January 2006 (the earliest available version of the Ecclesia Dei list I could find cached on the Internet Archive) to January 2020, I found:
Category……………………………………..2006…..2020…..Absolute increase (% increase)
Total parishes with ?1 TLM…………..219……..607…….388 (177%)
Parishes with daily TLM………………..31……….98………67 (216%)
Parishes with weekly TLM…………….158……..359…….201 (127%)
All dioceses hosting ?1 TLM………….144……..197……..53 (37%)
Archdioceses hosting ?1 TLM…………36………49………13 (36%)
Cities with ?1 TLM……………………….218…….608……..390 (179%)
US States/territories with ?1 TLM…..51………53……….2
Canadian Provinces with ?1 TLM…….5………..8………..3
I hope my efforts at making a legible table within the limits of a comment box were not too distracting. Anyone could potentially replicate this work using the methods I described or take it even further and develop something much more in-depth with the various year-by-year data points available.
P.S.- Very sorry, I evidently did not heed Father’s advice about using UNICODE for special characters or proofreading carefully enough! Any question marks should be “greater than or equal to” signs (≥).
From the Liturgy Guy, February 2019:
“Traditional Latin Mass National Survey” presented by by Fr. Donald Kloster
https://liturgyguy.com/?s=latin+mass+statistics
“Rigorous study on these topics [listed in the final paragraph] are planned for 2019.”
In the stats provided by Latinmassdir.org it is no surprise that the US, France, and GB are leading the way. On the other hand, it is a bit surprising, and more than a bit disappointing, to see where Spain is. Spain was a very Catholic country that produced Dominic, Ignatius, and Escriva. It produced one of the two greatest Thomists of the 20th century–the University of Salamanca has a separate Cemetery of Theologians. Its history is one of fighting for the Faith.
Robtnrown
The close relationship between Franco’s government and the church had two unfortunate consequences: the clergy became complacent and there was no habit among the laity of questioning whatever innovation the church might introduce.
This was the ideal situation for the eradication of the old Mass, without a murmur of protest.
HvonB,
That situation existed everywhere and with everybody. About the only exception was Poland, because of Wynszynski. Others who resisted were persecuted.
robtbrown: Good point about Cardinal Wyszynski, but that began with Cardinal Sapieha during WW II- an actual Prince of the Church who inspired Wyszynski.
Sapieha ran a clandestine seminary in the basement of his Krakow residence, one of his students was Karol Wojtyla. Around 1942 Hans Frank, the Reich Commissar for Poland, insisted on a dinner invitation at the Cardinal’s residence. Cardinal Sapieha served him, I think, black bread and water. (Hans Frank may have been remorseful and converted to Catholicism between the Nuremberg trials and his hanging).
Cardinals Sapieha and Wyszynski inspired Seminarian Wojtyla and Fr. Wojtyla. One day (I don’t recall some of the details) perhaps around 1960 Bishop Wojtyla was working at his desk when there was a knock at the door and a young priest entered.
The priest said that Poland’s Communist government was going to imprison him for some sort of minor infraction. Bishop Wojtyla told the young priest to report to prison, the two men prayed together, and the young priest departed for prison.
Bp. Wojtyla said nothing, but the next Sunday he went to the young priest’s parish and celebrated Mass for anxious and disgruntled parishioners. When it came time for the Sermon, Bp. Wojtyla delivered an inspiring homily that expertly touched on several themes. In the pews that Sunday were also several Commie ferrets, they immediately realized their mistake. The young priest was quickly released from prison.