The power of the traditional liturgy to open people up to the Catholic Faith must never be underestimated.

But remember… the TLM has to be suppressed.

From a reader….

I was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist. I fully looked at the Catholic Church for the first time in 2008 and by 2009 was a Catholic. I now attend the Latin Mass in Portland, OR of all places.

Your blog was one of those that opened my eyes that year.

May God bless you and all your future endeavors.

The power of the traditional liturgy to open people up to the Catholic Faith must never be underestimated.

And never never never underestimate the power of an invitation.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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13 Comments

  1. eamonob says:

    One of the cool things is, being from the Portland area myself, we have enough Latin Masses available here that I don’t even know which parish this reader goes to!

  2. BeatifyStickler says:

    My older brother invited a Protestant friend to see the Old Mass at St. Clements in Ottawa. He’s now a Catholic.

    I took a friend to the Old Mass and he is now a Monk in a traditional order.

    Pre summorum days I was in seminary, wasn’t my vocation, but I asked Father Jonathan Robinson permission for a fellow seminarian to attend a private low Mass. The same seminarian is now a Priest with the ICKSP.

    My wife invited all her friends from a Catholic college in Ontario to the Toronto Oratory. All her friends were now married in the Old Rite and have openly stated that it has renewed their faith.

    Our in-laws on the other hand have banned us from their family. The Prophet of Hope as he calls himself states that we are not on fire enough? Two of their children have abandoned the faith, but we who attend the Latin Mass require prayer and help.

    ??

  3. anthtan says:

    New evangelization, eh? What was wrong the with old one, again?

  4. Imrahil says:

    Dear anthan,

    there was, and is, nothing wrong with the “old” evangelization; why then do people speak of “new evangelization”? For a valid reason: because it is a different thing to preach to secular nonbelievers of Christian extraction compared to preaching to heathens. Just like it is a different thing to preach to faithful Protestants than to heathens (or nonbelievers), so in the 16th centuries those that tried, and sometimes succeeded, to get souls back to Mother Church were called “counterreformators” rather than just “missionaries”.

  5. Jim Dorchak says:

    Please pray for my family and I.

    We do not have the MASS (3 years now) …………. any mASS right now because we are not Vaxed. We are not allowed in the Church building.

    Yesterday I sent a letter begging. I BEGGED the SSPX to bring us the Mass in the South of Chile. We live over 12 hours from Santiago. I am all for driving to the Mass but a 12 hour drive is not economically doable for us and we can not fly because of the VAX.

    No Mass.
    Almost 3 YEARS.
    No confession.

    In Chile if you are not vaxed the bishops now hold that your are NO LONGER CATHOLIC.

  6. Cornelius says:

    I ONLY assist at a TLM but I’ve never understood this i.e., converting shortly after experiencing a TLM.

    Some wise man (I think BXVI) said that every believer is drawn to the true faith via (predominantly) one of the three transcendentals of Truth, Beauty, or Goodness, and that it depends on the particular constitution of each person.

    While I respect the roles of Beauty (through art and other externals) and Goodness (seen e.g. in the lives of saints) to convert souls, it has always been Truth, expressed in orthodox theology, that has drawn me.

    For that reason, the beauty of the TLM has never actually touched me much. What does move me is that the TLM prayers reflect a more orthodox content of belief than the NO. TLM prayers more accurately tell us how to approach our Maker and what we are actually doing at Mass.

    Truth, Truth, it’s all about Truth!

  7. IaninEngland says:

    @ Jim Dorchak
    Do not be discouraged. When I was in a similar situation, I was reminded of the Japanese Church, which survived for around 250 years without priests and without the Sacraments after S. Paul Miki was martyred. Jesus said “Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” Take Him at His word.
    In the meantime, here’s a site where you can watch the Mass live. I hope it is helpful:
    https://www.latinmass.live/
    Seriously? Not a Catholic if you’re not vaccinated? What a stupid thing to say! Is there a new sacrament now, the holy vaccine? No, not in my Catholic Church!
    You are in my prayers.

  8. JabbaPapa says:

    I’m currently on foot pilgrimage to Fátima, Santiago de Compostela, and Lourdes, currently at the Spain-Portugal border.

    I have been generously taken in by a local Spanish family – – not middle class, not intellectuals, not theologians.

    But they are devoted to Mary, faithful to the warnings given at Fátima, interested in the Imitatio Christi, and just straightforwardly Catholic – – and they hate what is being done in and to the Church, dislike the Pope, long for the days of John Paul II, play Gregorian Chant on the car stereo, and bemoan the taking out of Latin from the Mass.

    These are not neo-Pelagians, they are farmers and labourers.

    Whatever happened to the smell of the sheep ? Did Bergoglio wake up one morning and decide that all Bishops needed a hose down to get rid of it ?

  9. Fr. Reader says:

    @Imrahil
    Thank you for your reply and explanation.

    People getting angry at phantasies of their own imagination are not useful for serious dialogue.

  10. Imrahil says:

    Dear Ianiningland,

    I think the dear Jim Dorchak was saying that they treated him as no longer Catholic, not that they actually went ahead and explicitly said they did considered him no longer Catholic.

    Dear Jim Dorchak,

    forgive the perhaps naive suggestion, but what about showing up at your parish as if nothing had been? And if, but only if, someone says anything, answer in a friendly tone: “Oh I really did think there’s been an end to that stuff, after all those years.”? And only leave if they ask you to? It’s of course too great a humiliation to endure very often, but maybe check once?

    These things have a slow march out; on an infinitely less important matter, the pub I regularly frequent does still have “we earnestly advise to use masks when not seated” on its internet page, and only by going there you find out what is the actual case: that most people put them down on the day they were allowed to, and the rest followed suit within a week… I’m naive and not aquainted with your situation. Only, the situation doesn’t seem downright impossible to me that the whole country forgets that there has ever been such a thing as covid, and more than happy to include with extra friendliness those they had previously been forced to exclude by the State’s superior firepower… and you in the meantime still waiting for an official invitation by the bishops “now, those we previously locked out of the Churches are welcome to return”.

  11. Jim Dorchak says:

    @IaninEngland and Imrahil
    Good news! Our prayers have been answered in a good way. The SSPX has offered to come and visit us and offer Mass and Sacraments. Slowly ….. not even scheduled but they are going to try!!! This is all we asked for!! Thank God and I mean that because it is all in his plan. We hope to see them between now and January and man what a gift.

    @Imrahil you are right. They did not say to us “You are no longer catholic” they told us we are not welcome until you get a vax!

    Well that is easy enough. Just sneak in the back of the church right? Well it is not that easy for at our Church we were very active and everyone knows us and there are typically less than 30 people attending Mass on any given Sunday and less on Saturday night. Sometimes it was only our son serving at the altar, my wife and I at Mass with maybe 3 other people and the Priest.
    Our Pastor follows with obedience the rules of our secular bishop and the secular bishops of Chile that have proclaimed: “No (abortion vax / sacrafice to satan) No mASS”!
    I do not blame our pastor but I still wish he would come and visit us and bring us communion at home and hear our confessions. But that would open him to the remote possibility of getting sick. Also it would include effort on his part.
    Chile is a very simple country. Not 3 rd world at all. We have all the stuff that is found in the former USA in ample supply. Fiber Optic in most towns. Paved roads. Public water and sewer. Power to most areas and even some remote areas, but the population is very subservient. Obedient to a fault. It is sad in many ways.
    If the bishops of Chile state that you can not have last rites because you have not had the Vax, or baptism or communion or confession, then so be it! That must be Catholic! No arguments. None. It is the rules. It has NOTHING to do with the Faith of Our Fathers or the Church and everything to do with politics.

    We are just so thankful for the SSPX.

  12. cajunpower says:

    I was attending St. Patrick’s in New Orleans when I decided to convert. I didn’t usually attend the extraordinary form there, although I always enjoyed it. They had a Latin ordinary form as well, but even the vernacular ordinary form was beautiful and reverent (they had chant, but the fact that there was no Latin in some of the Masses suggests that they didn’t fully accept The Council). It truly embodied the Benedictine reform of the reform and mutual enrichment.

    I’m not sure I would’ve converted had I gone through a different parish. I attended Mass at other churches in the city, but so many of them just didn’t seem serious. I didn’t want watered down liturgy, dumbed down theology, and obnoxious music. Why would I convert to that? It feels like it’s dead or dying.

    But St. Patrick’s felt alive. It felt like the priests and laity believed what the Chuch teaches and believed that the Mass is what it is claimed to be. There was a vitality there.

    Thank God for tradition, and for good, orthodox priests and laity!

  13. IaninEngland says:

    @ Jim Dorchak
    God is good :)

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