Fr. Z's Blog

More and more I’ve been musing, under the shadow of shifting demographics and the Church’s self-devastation wrought by those in the stratosphere of power, about the short and long term of the Novus Ordo and TLM.  I’ve been wondering if, sooner than we think, we will see a massive increase in the use of the Extraordinary Form and priests who want to celebrated it.

In the end, will the TLM be the predominant form?   A couple years ago, I scoffed at the idea.  Now, I am not so sure.  A new factor in the mix is the utterly shocked environment which has resulted from those in power around Francis, including The Present Crisis.   Now we see that Rome has hamstrung the USCCB on the eve of their meeting.  People are rather pissed off about that and rightly so.  It’s like the term in Italian, “auto-goal” used in soccer for when you score a point against your own team.  To continue for a moment with sports, it’s really hard to win games when you have your own hands squeezing your own neck.

Moving along, I regularly text with a priest who wants to learn the TLM, but is hampered by the lack of Latin.   He has gotten to the point where he has a strong desire to acquire what the TLM can give him as a priest.  Alas, the Latin is an obstacle.

Those lib bastards in Catholic schools and priestly formation during and after the Council (read: “new springtime!”) really knew what they doing when they crushed Latin.   May they burn slowly in the deepest cinders of hell, if that is where they wound up.  The damage they did to the entire Church is impossible to evaluate.

I get email from priests all the time asking about Latin resources.  Why? Because they want to learn the TLM but they are intimidated by the language.   They are frustrated.

Imagine yourself standing in front of the newly discovered massive door to a wondrous treasure to which someone, years ago, took away the key and then lied to you about its existence.   And you know that that treasure belongs to you by right.  It is your patrimony.

My first advice to these good men is to put yourselves in the shoes of those altar boys of so many centuries: just start learning the prayers and responses by rote… at first.  You have to get your tongue around them and your ears tuned up.   More and more will come in time, I promise.  I had made some audio resources once upon a time and I can make more.   Try HERE.

Shifting gears, but not really, I have also seen an upswing in articles from folks who go to the TLM either for the first time or who are starting to get into it.

For example, today at Crisis I read an interesting piece.

Millennials, Authenticity and the Latin Mass

My wife and I have recently started regularly attending our local Latin Mass in the Extraordinary Form. We took our two young boys one Sunday in July, shortly after the news of Theodore McCarrick’s sins jumpstarted the current round of clergy sex scandals. We had previously attended about once a year just to mix it up, but since July we have gone every other week and now three weeks in four. We may switch permanently.

The antiquity of the Mass contrasts with the youth of the congregation. […]

My wife and I are Millennials. Like most of my cohort, I exclusively attended the Novus Ordo in English growing up. My wife converted from Evangelical Protestantism during college. Yet we are poised to join a puzzling trend of modern American Catholicism: the small but growing set of Millennials finding a home in the Mass of Trent.

This confuses our bishops and elders. Catholicism, they say, should make itself more understandable to the modern world. […]

But the young families I have met almost completely lack such pretense. They do not consider themselves better or seek some false comfort. They acknowledge they are sinners living in a sinful world—indeed, that’s what makes them seek out the old rites. They engage the modern world around them, hold down ordinary jobs, cheer for the same sports teams, and spend their weekends doing ordinary modern things. But they share a particular priority: To raise children in twenty-first century America while remaining authentically Catholic.

Millennials and “authenticity” go together. Brand managers speak of a brand being “authentic” to itself or its corporate values to draw in Millennial consumers. Workplace gurus teach older generations how to be “authentic” around Millennials to attract and keep good young employees. Millennials themselves discuss seeking “authenticity” and meaning in their lives and often do so through their choices in consumption, such as by buying locally sourced food produced by old techniques, local craft beer and liquors, handmade products, and “artisanal” goods.

[…]

There’s quite a bit more, and I would like to have a discussion with this young man about a couple of his points.  However, he nailed it pretty well.

What I also found interesting is, in his first paragraph, a reference to The Present Crisis.

It is all of a piece, isn’t it?

Priests and lay people… authenticity.

I read at Sandro Magister’s place today a piece which brings the move of Francis and the Congregation of Bishops to gut the USCCB’s efforts at “synodality” after we hear endless harping about giving more over to conferences.   And yet this is what they do.   This was brought side by side with what Francis did to the Chinese.  Rather than listen to people in China, he moved monarchically.

It is all of a piece.

The writer of the piece about the TLM wants authenticity.   But if all policy (including liturgical) is coming from an environment now dominated by lawyers and insurance companies who, out of terror of lawsuits and bad press micromanage everything, the last thing that the institutional Church of chanceries and curias will produce is authenticity.

It is all of a piece.

You lay readers have strong influence.   Get organized.  Find friendly priests.   Form base communities and get to it.