The Failure of the Traditional Latin Mass

When Pope Benedict XVI made the Traditional Latin Mass freely available through Summorum Pontificum in 2007, we were told by the traditionalists that this would revitalize the Church. The Novus Ordo Mass almost destroyed the Church, but the Traditional Latin Mass will save her. The TLM will draw people like a magnet. Churches will once again fill up, people will return to the Sacraments. The future is with the Traditional Latin Mass. Save the Liturgy, Save the World. Right?

It has now been almost 11 years since the implementation of Summorum Pontificum, the Motu Proprio that allows the TLM to be celebrated at any time. Below is a chart showing the growth of the TLM in the USA through 2015. As the chart says, 92% of US dioceses have at least one TLM every week:

However, just recently a Gallup poll came out which showed that weekly Mass attendance among US Catholics is lower than ever.  The bloggers have all pointed to this poll as proof that Vatican II and the "New" Mass are not working.  More specifically, they have pointed to this poll as proof that Pope Francis is a failure, as Churchmilitant.com wrote HERE:

Catholic church attendance in the United States fell by six percent between the pontificates of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, the sharpest drop in decades, a new Gallup poll has revealed.

An average of 39 percent of U.S. Catholics attended church weekly during the heart of the Francis papacy, from 2014 to 2017, Gallup found in a survey released April 9, which represents a significant drop from the 45 percent of Catholics who attended weekly Mass from 2005 to 2008, in the early years of the Benedict pontificate.

Church Militant tells us that prior to 2008, Mass attendance had actually stabilized. The Church wasn't growing, but neither was it shrinking, despite the "upheaval" caused by Vatican II:

Weekly Mass attendance among American Catholics had stabilized in the mid-2000s at around 45 percent, after falling sharply during the period comprising the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and its aftermath, which many Catholics experienced as a time of confusion and upheaval.

Church Militant tries to tell us that the reason for the stabilization was Pope Benedict XVI and the reason for the decline is Pope Francis:

Gallup’s methodology has been to conduct surveys on church attendance near the middle of each decade from the 1950s through the present, so it does not provide a strict year-to-year accounting. Nonetheless, their choice of the period 2005-2008 happened to coincide with the first four years of the Benedict papacy, while the period of 2014-2017 does nearly the same for the pontificate of Francis, who was elected in 2013.

John Zuhlsdorf doesn't specifically blame Pope Francis.  His attack is against the Novus Ordo Mass:

Frankly, I think the way that our liturgical worship has been over the last few decades has made us all look like idiots to each wave of young people who have come along since the degradation began. That and lack of catechesis resulted with other factors in an ongoing, self-sustaining spiral downward towards a point of no return.

And our pastors insist on doing the same damn things over and over, ignoring the single most important factor in our Catholic lives: worship. There is a hierarchy to our loves and the activities that flow from them. Atop the hierarchy is what we owe God, whom we must love above all creatures, by the virtue of religion: worship. If we get our worship wrong, as individuals and as groups small and large, then everything else will be screwed up. {Emphasis Zuhlsdorf]

The result: erosion of Catholic identity.

Hey, wait a second! 45% of Catholics attended weekly Mass from 2005 to 2008? And that number had stabilized? But that was back in the bad old days before Summorum Pontificum. That was before we had the TLM proliferating all over the place revitalizing the churches. That was before we had all these wonderful *Catholic* bloggers on the Internet, such as John Zuhlsdorf and Church Militant, cheering on traditionalism and the TLM and telling us how terrible all the rest of the Church is, including and most especially, how dangerous Pope Francis is to the faith.

And yet now that the TLM is so readily available, the number of practicing Catholics has actually gone down? Shouldn't that number be going up? The trads told us that traditionalism and the TLM would drive Church attendance, helping it go through the roof. But the numbers tell us just the opposite.

The Traditional Latin Mass is beautiful.  But to say that it is the best way, or even worse, the only way to celebrate Mass is to put God in a box.  The TLM is European in nature from the language to the heavy vestments to the music.  It appeals to a certain group of people, who are very passionate about the Mass, but it is not for everyone.  

Even Msgr. Charles Pope, a staunch traditionalist, recognized the limitation of the TLM a couple of years ago when he wrote this:

Some years ago (as far back at the early 1980s) we who love the Traditional Latin Mass often said (or it heard said) that if we would just return to the beautiful Latin Mass our churches would again be filled.

At first this appeared to be happening. As many dioceses (through the various indults of the 1980s and 1990s) began to offer the Traditional Latin Mass, those churches were filled, often to standing room only. Liturgical progressives were horrified and traditionalists were joyfully pleased and felt vindicated.

But as the availability of the Traditional Latin Mass has increased, it seems that a certain ceiling has been reached.

In my own archdiocese, although we offer the Traditional Latin Mass in five different locations, we've never been able to attract more than a total of about a thousand people. That’s only one-half of one percent of the total number of Catholics who attend Mass in this archdiocese each Sunday.

One of our parishes generously offers a Solemn High Mass once a month on Sunday afternoon, a Mass that I myself have celebrated for over 25 years. But we have gone from seeing the church almost full, to two-thirds full, to now only about one-third full.

I congratulate Msgr. Pope, with whom I often disagree, on his acceptance of reality.  However, in his quest for an optimistic solution to the narrow appeal of the TLM, he says that it is up to the laity to evangelize about the beauty of the Mass:

Evangelization is hard work, but it is work that matters if we want to maintain a viable presence going forward. The lovers of the Traditional Latin Mass are not exempt.

Evangelize or else close and die. It’s a hard fact, but numbers matter. Too many in the Church today demand respect and support without showing the fruits that earn respect and that make support prudent and reasonable.

Here in my own borough of Brooklyn, we have had one weekly traditional Latin Mass for 25 plus years. About 50 to 60 people attend each week, and that number has barely changed over the years. This Mass has been celebrated for many years in a predominately Latino Church. There are many empty seats at the TLM. However, at the Spanish Mass held right after the TLM, it is standing room only. And yet, the trads will still tell us that the TLM is the future of the Church. They truly do live in their own world apart from reality.

The truth is, the TLM and even the radical right Catholic bloggers play no part, one way or the other, in the decline in Mass attendance. And despite John Zuhlsdorf's harsh, angry statements, e,g, "liturgical worship that has made us all look like idiots", the Ordinary Form of the Mass has not played any part in decreasing Mass attendance, either. The sad truth is that our western culture is dying. We have rejected God. Our culture has become almost entirely materialistic and hedonistic. People are not just rejecting the Catholic Church. They are rejecting God.

There is little doubt in my mind that, contrary to the assertions of the Trads, the Second Vatican Council is directly responsible for the massive growth of the Catholic Church in the last few decades.  Yes, the Church is in decline in the western culture, but it is growing by leaps and bounds in third-world countries.  The Second Vatican Council, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, led the Church away from the Euro-centric mindset that had guided her for so many centuries.  The Church opened up worship to reflect the worshippers, making the Church much more accessible to non Europeans.

Here is a chart showing Catholic populations in 1910:

Here is a chart showing the largest Catholic countries in 2010:

Would this have happened without the Second Vatican Council?  Highly unlikely.

We have a serious problem with fallen away Catholics in western culture.  But Trads need to realize that the Traditional Latin Mass is just a small part of the Church.  The TLM is not for everyone.  The TLM is not the universal cure-all.  Christ did not say the identifying sign of His Church is Latin, Gregorian music, organs, heavy vestments or Gothic architecture.  He said the identifying sign of His disciples is their love for one another.  People are drawn to the Church when they see the love we have for each other and them. Sadly, I don't see a whole lot of Godly love among the Trads.  In fact, I personally have been the recipient of a lot of hate from the traditionalists

We need to pray and to give our lives to Jesus Christ and allow Him to work through us to draw the rest of mankind.  We need to allow Our Lord to make the decisions and not decide through our own human reasoning.  That will lead us astray every time.