The idolatrous ‘new order’ is a catastrophe: Australia records sharp drop in Mass attendance.
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More from The Pip:
I suspect church attendance has not recovered from COVID.
Covid is largely irrelevant.
If you have a look at the graphs on page 4 of the report, 2016 is a noticeable point of decline but the general vector is the same.
This is horrible, and is a direct consequence of the N.O. Mass.
The Mass of the Ages commands attendance and attention. It’s a thoroughly masculine event and reenactment. The N.O. Mass is altogether feminine, as it recreates ancient Judaic dinner table blessings. It’s an attempt to minimize and erase the blood sacrifice of Christ for all of my many sins, as well as the sins of the entire world.
Vatican II was such an obvious disaster and they just refuse to reverse course, to start reintroducing the Mass of the Ages.
And for all of you who have never been, because the Mass of the Ages has been so suppressed, I recommend watching the FSSP or SSPX Masses on YouTube.
Any cleric who says it’s merely a Latin equivalent of what occurs in an N.O. Mass is straight up lying or hopelessly in the dark. And if you wish to understand why the priestly orders are reserved for men, and men alone, you have to start observing the Mass of the Ages.
I was musing on this this morning, as you do.
The OT often describes how the Israelites turned away from God and suffered as a result, like the plague in the desert, the Assyrians and the Babylon exile. Yet a remnant was saved.
In our time society widely is turning away from God, and the same thing is happening. Societal decline and Heinleinish bad luck seems to be increasing substantially.
Dawkins noticed this, and how the West had been blessed by the Christian ethos. Now that the West is turning away from the Christian ethos the result is so very much like what happened to the Israelites when they did the same thing.
The good news is that according to the Bible a remnant still will be saved. But only a remnant.
Interesting comparison indeed, Bruce.
I was born after the change – but the thing is I ‘miss’ it. I thought that was strange until I saw that millions of my contemporaries around the world missed it too – as evidenced by the youthfulness of the old rite’s aficionados and their attraction to more traditional religious orders.
However, as unsympathetic as I am to the committee-made novus ordo, we have to be wary of the post hoc propter hoc fallacy. My own view is that decline did occur after this but only partly because of this. It’s more important to stress that 1) the ancient Mass can never be abrogated; and 2) that it is anthropologically authentic – which, to a considerable extent, means superior; which, to an absolute extent, means normative.
I’m in a wonderful parish, with a foot in the old and new (Latin Mass once a week).
I would say attendance is holding up.
Latin Mass isn’t going to fill the worldwide pews of the Church.
And I always find it funny that those supporting the “ancient” rite don’t call for the Eucharist to be celebrated by a priest around the family table; that is, truly, the ancient rite. It’s not about numbers.
This ancient Eucharist was a great sign to many nations where “outsiders” were able to see the love and fidelity shared by Christians where nobody was greater than anyone else and the Eucharistic specimen wasn’t locked up behind some priest’s robe in a sepulchre where only the “holy” could enter.
The theology of the Latin Rite is perverse and the “veil of the temple was torn in two” because Christ made the holy accessible, not just in a special place for a special person where nobody could enter.
I’ll add a postscript:
Pope Benedict, writing in the late 1960’s said “the future of the Church are small communities that celebrate in the homes, there will be no church buildings and it will resemble that of the early church.”
I’m aware of one such “Church” in the southern suburbs of Perth; it’s a family home where they celebrate the Eucharist and they attract the far away (who would never go inside a church, ever).
CL,
Likewise, I was born afterwards. I never attended a Tridentine Mass until just prior to COVID. And then during COVID, the FSSP was the only church open, besides a nearby SSPX, which I didn’t know about then,
Just attending, trying to pay attention, you begin to pick up the intense masculinity of what is occurring. The only secular equivalent would be the changing of the guard, at Arlington, where each gesture and movement is prescribed.
There was a priest, now deceased, that I mentioned my observations to, wondering if it was just me, and he assured me I wasn’t alone in my observations. Just watch some of the more important Liturgies on YouTube, such as the Easter Saturday Vigil, or Holy Thursday. Or today, which is Trinity Sunday.
You’re conflating Tradition and archeology, Mark.
Lovers of the old Mass celebrate the fact that it evolved over millennia; they don’t claim it resembles what Peter did with four or five others in a Roman house church. The latter notion is the actuating fantasy par excellence of the novus ordo’s proponents. They claim to be modern but are in fact primitivists (like many totalitarians) for whom evolutionary change is too glacial for their tastes. They reject all the changes that exist within living tradition because they personally did not perceive or cause them.
Ratzinger’s remarks were from a 1969 German radio broadcast. He was not so much predicting the future (which he specifically warned against doing) but rebutting those who were then saying the Church must be finished.
If there isn’t a priest presiding – with faculties to say Mass in such circumstances – it isn’t the Eucharist and they are not the Church.
Dan, I know you mean well but I don’t want the subject of Judaism intermixed with a discussion of contemporary Catholicism.
I don’t think so CL.
Our Lord gave us the Eucharist which is simply a Passover and can be performed anywhere (by a priest, yes, of course!).
The theology underlying the Latin Mass is screwed up. There is no more “holy of holies” that is somehow a distant, unattainable object. The fact that you get a “special guy” (priest) who is the only one who understands and sees what’s happening and the rest of the congregation do not participate in it is a complete bouleversement of the passover, which is a communal celebration.
A priest with his back to the crowd hardly symbolises, reflects or personifies Christ. Quite the opposite in fact.
I appreciate the tradition of it, but you can’t just choose 399 years of a liturgy that was developed for a specific purpose (normalisation) and then disregard the other 1567 years of Eucharists and its 2,000-year ancestry before that. It’s the puritanism behind the Latiners that most annoys me; as if they’re the sola liturgia and everything else is profane… a “competition of holiness!” 😛
If they just learned to shut up, it’d probably still be a central Catholic rite. Again, another problem with the Latiners is they forget that just about every movement in the RCC goes through a “time of testing.” Whether it be Jesuits, Franciscans whatever… many Latiners’ big mouths (I’m not saying you CL), going on that JPII The Great was an illegitimate Pope and VII was not properly conceived etc..
The Church always plays the long game and, for most, that’s too long.
You know it is about numbers too because Christ gave his disciples the Great Commission.
The church isn’t for some select superior few.
As for the much lauded but somewhat imaginary house church, a Roman domus could accommodate quite a number, more than four or five people around a table/altar especially there were no chair or pews, people stood throughout the entire mass, these houses were usually gifted to the church so they weren’t celebrating the Eucharist one day and sitting around eating dinner the next, especially as Romans ate reclining on couches* eating off a very low table, not sitting at a table on chairs.
I’m kind of imaging that former pagan altars, which most people had in their homes were pressed into service as Christian ones.
Pope Benedict may have been right about the suppression of the church, it’s happened before and will happen again, but not because people will willingly abandon churches in preference for hearing mass in their lounges.
*they even had them underground for feasting at the graveside of loved ones.
The other thing that puzzled me about this house church thing is that it seems to imply worship is for Sundays only yet in many parishes mass is still offered every day and churches, where it is safe to do so, are open for private prayer and sometimes confession, that is particularly true in Rome, and one of the things I love about travelling in Europe, so easy to ‘made a visit’. Every church no matter how famous has an adoration chapel off limits to mere gawkers.
It makes sense to me that early ‘house churches’ were dedicated worship spaces too.
There was absolutely no lack of worshippers in the village church where Mass was ending as we arrived yesterday morning. Beautifully turned out, no leggings, shorts or inappropriate clothing, the congregations ran the full gamut from babies to the aged.
Sadly though, many villages have only one church open, where the was once three or four.
It was a heart warming moment in my day.
But, like Oz, many of our friends here, make the same comments about their own children’s lack of interest in their faith. Not sure where it’s all going, but it can’t be anywhere good.
For what it’s worth. I was very concerned about attendance when Victoria finally allowed mass goers the same access as those partial to brothels in mid to late 2021. But people have returned. Not packed by any means, but better. My mob – middle aged descendants of the Irish – seem to have gone. But a lot of younger migrant families are turning up. Don’t tell the ALP though. As an aside, the Easter mass I attended in Tokyo this year was absolutely crammed.
Hello, Mark. You should come along to the trad service I go to on Sunday mornings. Lots of Latin, medieval sung responses, priest in tufted biretta with back to congregation during consecration …. all to a loud soundtrack of many squalling infants. It manages to have a strong sense of the sacred presence amid brawling, squalling humanity. Forget the idea of a sequestered space accessible only to a privileged caste. The parish primary school is introducing a new curriculum, theWestern classical tradition, similar to that which exists in a few places in NSW.
Mark, this time you are conflating “participation” with outwardly doing stuff. The congregation participates with its prayers and prayerfulness.
He faces God – along with the congregation. Can’t get more democratic than that.
It isn’t a meal; it is the sacrifice of the Mass. Describing every priest who said Mass for nearly 2000 years as the “opposite” of Christ is laying it on thick. Versus populum makes the priest an emcee, a performer and the centre of attention.
I’m not sure what these time-frames supposedly represent. Trent passed on what had come before. There was no rupture of the kind you’re suggesting.
I have already argued that is precisely why a committee invented the novus ordo Mass in the 1960s and 70s.
There are certain problematic and lamentable attitudes which often attend devotion to the old Mass but these are no more problematic or lamentable than the attitudes that have come to attend the praxis and ecclesiology of the modernists.
By the way – and this may surprise some people – I have never attended a Vetus Ordo mass. I don’t believe in liturgy shopping and have tended to be part of my geographical parish over the years. An exception is the high Mass at St Stephen’s on Sunday. I did travel a distance to a Carmelite parish in my 20s because they were enrolling wearers of the brown scapula into the confraternity. I am now enrolled for life.
My fondest boyhood memories are of attending parish novenas with Mum on Tuesday nights. The blessing with monstrance is very solemn and beautiful.
I know of one couple who no longer attend Mass but watch it on TV. They say that if it was good enough during covid then it is good enough all the time.
Just as the pilot on your plane faces the destination, not the passengers.
That’s silly behaviour Crossie.
They cannot participate in the Eucharist if they don’t go.
And mass at home wasn’t good enough during covid.
I hated it, and went through a period of not watching.
Great, I can participate from Mass for you at Home, since the prayerfulness are obviously the most important aspect of the Eucharist, I don’t even need to receive the species! sarc/
Not from my perspective. All I see if back. It’s still based on an old Jewish idea that only one is allowed to access the Holy of Holies. That Jewish idea is based on an even more primitive idea of the ancients that there was a special place (a mountain top or a ravine or whatever) where only one special “minister” or shaman or whatever could frequent on behalf of others. We know God destroyed the Holy of Holies as a sacred place where everything else was profane because Christ made everyone (potentially) holy.
Trent was necessary, for its time. Through the puritanical approach I mentioned of the Latiners, they nudge out the other forms of Eucharists as “not good enough” or “not holy enough.” This may not be you CL but I get the feel that it is. It precisely one of the reasons the Latiners drew further and further away from Catholicism. Since the Latiners rarely in my experience build communion, but rather division. As I said, the MacKillops of this world, or the Jesuits or Franciscans or Domenicans or the Redemptorists all got shunned by the Church at some stage and I don’t recall any of them causing the same awful division the Latiners do. You can’t be Roman Catholic if you’re not in communion with Rome.
Then why the derision for other Eucharistic forms by the Latiners? Why is a mass said around a kitchen table by an ordained Catholic priest not valid or a future Pope celebrating mass on a kayak?
No thanks Henry, I only go to Catholic services.
I love your inventive headlines, CL. ‘Thylacine theology’ is a good one.
My brush with Christianity was as a child with High Church Anglicanism.
I grew to love the liturgies, Morning and Evening Prayer, and the Solemnisation of Marriage still brings me to tears.
Interesting to read of people’s feelings here re the Latin Mass. I’ve never heard one, though will one day I am sure.