New Resurgence: Young Families Are Flocking to the Latin Mass Despite Scorn from the Vatican
CV NEWS FEED // The Latin Mass is seeing a major resurgence in popularity among young people and families according to several reports.
As Minot Daily News explained in a recent article, the Latin Mass used to be “the standard service given by churches worldwide until the mid-1960s,” after the Second Vatican Council elevated use of the vernacular over the traditional rite in “an effort to make religion more accessible to the modern world.”
Though most parishes adopted the Novus Ordo Missae, (new order of the Mass) following Vatican II, the Latin Mass continues to be celebrated, and is now seeing a major resurgence, despite increasing discouragement from the Vatican.
In May 2023, Pope Francis enacted one of the changes from a motu proprio he issued in 2021, Traditionis custodes, restricting the celebration of TLM, which he said “was being used in an ideological way.”
Now, all priests ordained after July 16, 2021 must receive authorisation from their bishop and the Holy See to celebrate TLM. Francis called resistance to the changes implemented by Vatican II “a nostalgic disease,” and “indietrismo,” or “backwardness” in Italian.
Yet, one former TLM pastor Canon William Avis told Minut Daily that his TLM parish started to see 800 to 850 attendees at Mass on Sunday in recent years.
According to Crisis Magazine’s 2021 survey on Latin Mass attendance rates, which cited the Latin Mass Directory, 658 parishes celebrate TLM out of 16,702 parishes in the US.
The survey collected data from 2019 to 2021 and received responses from 12% of TLM parishes from across the country.
According to the data, the average attendance at TLM mass across the 59 parishes in the survey was 145; in January 2020, the average across 61 parishes was 163; in January 2021, the average across 69 parishes was 174; and in June 2021, the average across 75 parishes was 196.
In short, the rate of TLM attendance increased by 34%, and the number of parishes offering TLM increased by 27%.
“So at a time when general Mass attendance was decreasing,” the report pointed out, “attendance at the TLM was dramatically increasing.”
“Latin Mass has developed through history since the time of the Apostles,” Avis said, “so it kind of gives a certain sense of foundation, of roots. It’s something that it’s not just going to randomly change.”
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