A Leaven In The World… Signs Of Growth At “The Margins” Of The Church
By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Why does a young man of 18 years old put on a suit and tie on Sunday morning, leaving his parents and sisters behind, to drive to a more distant parish? To attend the Traditional Latin Mass.
I’d noticed him for a few weeks along with our growing Sunday Traditional Mass congregation and met him briefly at our weekly coffee and donuts that follows. People come and go in every parish. In ours some come to see the Latin Mass as a sort of spectacle out of the ordinary. Approaching it as less than one’s spiritual bread and butter usually results in lack of commitment. Or is a result of it.
After attending weekly for some time the young man, J., has now joined the parish.
We’ve swelled over a period of six years from an average of 30 or 40 to now 60 or more each Sunday at the Latin Mass. I’ve learned over time to just watch and wait when it comes to recruits. Human nature is something that must be studied because everyone, of course, is different. Many Catholics are scared off by the idea of commitment and some continue to come to Mass as long as you pretend you don’t notice them. It’s a kind of spiritual truce of sorts, I suppose.
A suit-and-tie is a rare sight in most Catholic parishes on Sundays morning when the most casual items in the closet are the usual garb. For years I have asked our Novus Ordo folks who attend Mass alone to witness by dressing as if on a date with the spouse, but to no avail. The best way to get your spouse’s attention when going out of the house is to dress as if going on a date. Isn’t God more important than a date?
But common sense is no longer common when we’ve rejected it from the highest ranks of the Church in the vain hope for a new Catholic springtime launched entirely on innovation. When your Church is the oldest one on Earth because it was founded by God Himself, an addiction to what’s happening now only ends up looking like an adolescent identity crisis.
It’s just a trickle, but the revolution is underway. I’ve gotten a couple of new registrations in the past week and two more this week. The group of young adults is steady and growing at my parish Traditional Latin Mass each Sunday. This group ranges in age from 18 to over 30. They are single, committed, and serious. They volunteer to help with parish tasks, although nearly all of them live outside the parish boundaries. And they all dress for the Holy Sacrifice as if they are coming to see God.
For many Catholics the culture shock is still too great to make the shift from the typical parish fare to the Latin Mass. For many men there is discomfort and dissatisfaction in the typical parish. A man described for me as dissatisfied for years with the bent of his geographical parish was on the verge of jumping to a nearby one that was neo-con but more robustly orthodox. Then the pastor was moved, eliminating his choice when the replacement turned out to be a modernist iconoclast.
Friends, children already in faith formation, parish structures like family centers and location usually win out over the beauty and timelessness of the Latin Mass, whose powers are felt most fully over a long period of time. The new Mass too often relies on doodads like contemporary music, noise, and roles on the altar for the whole family in order to offer spectacle. All of these innovations together leave the sanctuary appearing more like a stage for a children’s Christmas play than the place for the offering of authentic spiritual sacrifice.
The focus on the people has reinforced the worst instincts of our age. The Church should not be competing with the culture for a self-centered egomania that borders on idolatry.
We dilute the proper focus on the Lord with a “performance” when the priest faces the people throughout the Mass, making them akin to an audience at a theater by turning his back on ad orientem worship. It’s the radical turning away from the world that some of our Catholics find so shocking which best makes the point that what we have at holy Mass is absolutely not worldly, not a performance. We must grasp that point or worship goes off the rails.
Worship at Mass is a non-negotiable and we do that by a spiritual orientation toward God aided by a physical orientation which reinforces it.
Meanwhile the Pope is complaining about religious orders that have a lot of vocations at the same time as he fields questions about the crisis in vocations. Do we have a crisis in vocations or do we have an identity crisis? If young people like the structure and discipline handed down as our Tradition, do we have a right to demand that they reject it as a condition for the priesthood or religious life? We are here to ensure the life of the Church for the future so that all might be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. The youth are our future.
If traditional orders that offer structure to young people who seek it are successful, are they still wrong because the old-timers in power don’t like their integral approach to tradition?
The Mass is the devotion that brings Jesus Christ Incarnate back into our presence each time it is prayed by the priest. Yet, its traditional and historic version is officially discouraged and unofficially persecuted.
Young men who want to be men don’t like effeminate worship. Quit with the altar girls already. Church is for men, too.
On a recent Sunday J., our new young parishioner, brought his father with him to the Traditional Latin Mass. The only reason why we won’t see the elder with the son every week is because he wants to at least keep the rest of the family together for Mass, though a non-traditional one, in his home parish.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@MCITLFrAphorism
