US Bishops ask young Catholics why they stayed in Church. They respond it’s

Just happened to find this via Lew Rockell of all places. :smile:

It might be of interest to the Catholics on this board, so I will go ahead and post it.

Latin Mass is so awfully boring.

the best thing about Catholic mass is they don’t talk politics during their sermons.

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As one who regularly attends Latin Mass, that is interesting to me. Kind of surprised that “young Catholics” would feel that way, but good to hear in any case. Thanks for posting.

First of all welcome back!

Secondly I have a lot of young friends who are catholic…they would agree with this poll.

Tradition is something many of these young people cherish…it makes them feel rooted and grounded.

The youth of today hunger for tradition. For some, it’s being enamored of “retro”. But more and more studies and surveys are finding that the old forms of “smells and bells” – something ancient and reaching back to ancestry and generations past – is intriguing to them.

All people hunger for something to belong to. For some, it is the historical rituals of their church.

I grew up in the United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania. One thing I do remember is that it was non-political. The ministers never strayed into politics.

I would say that the particular congregation that I grew up in and that still exists in my hometown is in a way similar to the “latin” mass Catholic Church. While some Methodist congregations have moved to contemporary style services, they have stayed very much with the traditional Methodist service, including the traditional hymn book, which many congregations have abandoned for more contemporary music.

So I guess both Catholics and Protestants have their traditional vs contemporary split. :smile:

It is a long time since the Second Vatican Council decided to celebrate the Mass in the vernacular. It would be interesting to see how many of those understand Latin.

One of the major problems with retaining and attracting back lapsed Catholics is the need for the Catholic Church to serious redress the sex scandals that have enveloped the Catholic Church in the past couple of decades. Part of this change has to be in its treatment of victims of sexual abuse. It needs to support those victims fully rather than hide behind some legal mechanism.

These scandals have overshadowed the many good charities that the Catholic Church is involved in.

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Yup.

The bishops seem completely tone-deaf on that. Oh, no doubt they’ve said a lot of words and written a lot of articles and statements, but far too often some new revelation or statement makes all the previous words just … words.

Of course, the Church itself – and especially the Sacraments – do not change because of scandals. And that’s what makes devout Catholics stay. Catholics aren’t (or shouldn’t be) there for the bishops to their favorite priests. They’re there for the Sacraments that are only found in the Catholic Church. But evangelizing to encourage others to look at and consider the value of those Sacraments is quite difficult when the public face of the Church is smeared in scandal.

Here in Australia St Vinnies (St Vincent de Paul) do tremendous good and the Catholic education (primary and secondary) is a significant percentage of the Australian school system.

I have no doubts that the Catholic church will survive once the church hierarchy realise the need to stamp out as much as is humanly possible sexual assaults by the clergy and not to protect those who commit these vile acts but rather to look after the victims unconditionally.

I hit my teen years and grew increasingly tired of my mother’s Southern Baptist church. The endless Sunday sermons, the political agenda. I started to resist going, and as a compromise my mother said I could attend my father’s church (Lutheran). The ritual felt a little strange at first but hey - in and out in 45 minutes! What teen wouldn’t appreciate reclaiming his weekend?

Later, in . my twenties, my Dad converted to Catholicism and when I was visiting I would sometimes attend Mass with him. By then I had developed an appreciation for/interest in monasticism and mysticism, and when his church would offer Mass in Latin I would look forward to going. The foreign tongue, the incense, blood magic, other theatrics of the event - all of it held a visceral appeal, and was something completely different from the church of my youth. And the fact that the Church never tried to use science and reason to explain the mystery of it all was particularly refreshing (in my experience too many Protestants are keen to try and lend scientific weight to their beliefs).

TL:DR; It makes sense to me that a lot of the more religious youth would like to see a return to tradition, ritual, and structure - it’s a counterweight to the blandness and shallowness that “contemporary services” too often succumb to.

T y JJ. It does appear that young people can find a lot of satisfaction in the TLM, especially those who hunger for something rooted deeply in history and tradition.

This news comes at an interesting time, when there’s some controversy, if not outright division, within the Church regarding the TLM (among many other things).

Within just the past week, the TLM was banned by the old and august order of the Knights of Malta, which was founded roughly one thousand years ago.

“henceforth all the liturgical ceremonies within our Order must be performed according to the ordinary rite of the Church (rite of St. Paul VI) and not the extraordinary rite (Tridentine rite [Traditional Latin Mass]).”

So, we have younger Catholics declaring their predilection for the Traditional Latin Mass, when meanwhile older members of the ancient order have taken steps to abolish it.

Quite an interesting if not ironic state of affairs. I’m curious what Catholics on this board might think about this and similar developments.

It is ironic that the issue at hand is which practice of symbolism touches the faithful. In the Latin Mass, the priest and the people face the same direction, usually to the East because the East is associated with the appearance of God. The priest is leading the people to God, and they are right behind him.

It appears that in the day of Vatican II, the concern was that the congregation may have been interpreting this as the priest turning his back on the people, something Jesus would not do. Vatican II wanted the people–the Church–to be fellow participants (not just followers or observers) of the Mass.

The Knights of Mass seem to feel that all Knights should be in step together (more like a democracy) not one seen as leading the others.