We are pleased to publish today a guest article by Esther Berry of the delightful Substack The Literate Woman. She is responding to a rather peculiar article titled “You Think You Love the Traditional Mass.” I thank Prof.
Hang on a minute! Didn't you read that part about that one guy who went to the TLM and he didn't like it? I'll paste it below since you obviously missed the MOST IMPORTANT argument. You see, there was this guy, and he confessed it. And that proves NEARLY ALL people PACKING the PEWS at the TLM feel EXACTLY the same way! Q.E.D.
"A young person walking into a TLM today brings the formation he has, and the formation he has is not the formation that the rite assumes. One CQ contributor, around 30 years of age, related his experience going from New Mass to Old Mass in recent years:
'I’m frustrated because, having attended Latin Mass, I know intellectually that it’s better, higher, and some part of me understands that it is objectively more beautiful.. but because I was raised on Marty Haugen and shit, the emotional resonance just isn’t there. It doesn’t feel like *home* yet, somehow.'
That is not a confession of failure. It is a description of nearly all the people packing pews at TLM’s."
The TLM feels impenetrable to many starting out. Some come from it at an intellectual standpoint, like that gentleman. Others come from aesthetics and "get it" pretty much immediately.
Where it goes off is assuming the same seriousness and solidarity can be achieved with another liturgy, which I would argue is likely not the case. They are intertwined.
If one comes into the TLM with a desire for instant comprehension or emotional satisfaction, then one is approaching it with Novus Ordo expectations, and is bound to be confused or disappointed. But if one lets the TLM shape him according to its own priorities, its own "genius" - and this is the humble way, to be a disciple rather than trying to be a master - then its priorities become the soul's, and one is immensely enriched and blessed thereby.
I always say give it at least two months, three if you really want a fair shake. First month you don't even need to follow along with the missal if that is too high-stress. Then begin following along and by the end most people will find it to be a more enriching experience than the common parish.
Well sure, but Mrs. Berry's essay was so much longer and searching and delving than the simple but adequate rebuttal, "That's an evidently asinine claim with no supporting argument."
But the logic is (apparently?!): The guy wanted (to like) TLM for 'serious' reasons; but those aren't the 'real' reasons b/c what he 'really' wanted (was really looking for) was 'seriousness'...
Given how surprisingly popular it is to assert that the Latin Mass is no longer suited for modern people, it seems worthwhile to explore where that claim arises from and what are its numerous fallacies, as Prof. Berry did so well in her essay.
Sure. But to quote Mrs. Berry: (while brevity is the soul of wit (is it indeed?); and loquacity the soul of... the English professor?) "I have no argument whatsoever as to exactly how this works, or what its limitations are..."
Thanks! And to be clear, I take it to be a (substantive but playful) observation as much as (or more than) a criticism; and its object is Peter's defensive comment as much as (or more than) your essay.
Confusion... oh, I think I see: I forgot there were two Peter's in play. To clarify, Peter Nelson, I was referring to Peter Kwasniewski's "defensive comment" in response to my critical observation.
I'll go even farther and assert that, to my ears at least, that was a self-evidently AI written blurb. Have you ever noticed how AI loves to produce this stylistic idiom?
"Ruminate on this factwit. That is not a something of somewhat. It is a muchwhich of muchwhat."
Dear Prof. Berry, you are so on the money. It would be alarming if we felt emotionally rewarded, rather than challenged, with our first experience at the TLM. As a former teacher, I know that to be a better writer, we must, not write more, but read more. We are no longer reading. We are skimming. Summaries are too long for us. If we do not watch Laurel and Hardy at 8, we will not laugh with them at 16.
Yet, as a retiree, I have developed the habit of watching First Reactions To: Classical Music and Classic Movies from young adults, ((21-39). The genuine connection, they feel, involving, wide smiles and weeping, followed by gasps of wonder and cries of, " why didn't somebody tell me?" are almost too painful to bear.
Dr. K,I enjoyed this guest article so very much that I am (at the last minute!) renewing my subscription to T&S. I wasn't sure your T&S was what I needed now. I would like to read more from Esther Berry! She at age 25 sees through the frankly ridiculous and demonic arguments for banishing the TLM.
You deserve great blessings from God for tirelessly with your pen and speeches helping us weary Boomers keep fighting for the TLM rather than hope "someone else" will do what my parents (born in 1916 and 1923) didn't do anything about because they ”knew” it wouldn't do any good at that time.
I am 70 years old. I dont have much time left. I was formed by this Mass in Omaha until I was about 9 years old, then was forced to wander through a liturgical and catechetical wasteland until 2008 when I accidentally rediscovered the TLM in Charlotte at a diocesan Mass. I immediately realized this was the Mass that would feed my Faith for the rest of my life and be best for children.
I then moved to Santa Fe and bore all sorts of persecution in that archdiocese until I moved back to Omaha in 2021 to care for my dying mother. For 3 years I greatly enjoyed the FSSP parish there with Fr. Berg as pastor. Now that my mom died I have returned to CLT to be with my daughter.
Since the bishop of CLT destroyed the TLM in my former CLT parish and all local parishes, I finally researched the St Anthony of Padua SSPX chapel, the entire history of Abp. Lefebvre and watched many SSPX podcasts. I now see the huge differences between the SSPX and Ecclesia Dei and diocesan clergy preaching and making liturgical and preaching compromises in Novus Ordo fashion (much of it forced) to remain open under a diocesan bishop. For many reasons, the most important my being extremely motivated to HAND DOWN TO THE CHILDREN OF TODAY EXACTLY WHAT WAS ROBBED FROM ME, I have joined and am supporting an SSPX chapel. It provides the TLM and preaching and a website that denounces Modernist errors, but also cannot be closed down or tinkered with by a diocesan bishop.
I have not contributed much cash to Catholic churches over the past 30 years, because I knew it would be used against the True Catholic faith. NOW I am very comfortable contributing large amounts to this SSPX chapel to see and enjoy the fruits before I die!
Maryrose, Thank you for your kind words and your support of this Substack. I mean it when I say that without people like you, it would be impossible for me to carry on!
The rest of your remarks demonstrate, very effectively, why so many find the SSPX a refuge. The SSPX exists because of the constant criminal behavior of the hierarchy of the Church. There, I said it. But it's obviously true.
When I encountered Christianity at 21 years old, I was a curious atheist- and lived the common life of a libertine young adult at a secular university in Australia.
Upon reading about the historicity of the crucifixion, I knew there was something afoot about Christianity that I had not considered. I church hopped- non denominational, charismatic, Presbyterian- all the various confessions. None of them had the depth of Truth that I was seeking.
Throughout this seeking experience, I began to pray to the Holy Spirit (if He was indeed there, as I thought He might be). It was a constant prayer:
“Holy Spirit, lead me to the Truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is”. I had an extremely progressive and anti-theist family, so I knew the harsh social consequences of this flirtation with religion. I knew I needed something concretely True.
I attended two new masses during this time. On both occasions, I left thinking Catholics were fake Christians. One attendee mentioned to me after Mass “oh we don’t go to confession after V2, maybe really only once or twice a year”. This came upon my prompting that EO Christian’s generally confessed before they took communion. At the other parish, not a single person knew what “transubstantiation” was, when I asked question about the Real Presence. I was dumbstruck at how Catholics seemingly didn’t know their religion.
The liturgy smelled like mothballs, and was completely banal. I got nothing from it, regarding religious education nor worship. I had given up on Catholics as a reputable religion, until my venting of this experience online led a fellow political enthusiast to comment “you need to attend a Latin Mass” and linked me to the local FSSP Parish.
I did attend said parish, Palm Sunday 2017. During the Mass, I was struck with an overwhelming burning feeling in my chest, and it was like God Himself took scales from my eyes. The tabernacle, the altar, the precise movements of the Priest, literally looked to me like the completed version of the Old Testament. I was overwhelmed with this sentiment:
“If Christianity is the true religion, this is the truest expression of that religion”.
If that isn’t the power of God’s Grace, I don’t know what is.
Anyone combatting the TLM’s ability to be a bridge of Grace to the modern world is a traitor to our King, honestly. AMDG+
I can relate to your story so much. Thank you for sharing it here. The traditional liturgy has deepened and expanded my faith in countless ways, and we are not alone, but the miracle is repeated again and again. And that is because the Lord has deposited within tradition a permanent power to express His mystery and to draw souls to Him.
Fantastic response. I, as a Zillenial dinosaur born in a year that begins with 19 rather than 20, who had a sort of half and half experience of a childhood not entirely shaped by the Internet but an adolescence completely absorbed by it and smart-technology, resonate profoundly with this. Over years of attentive cultivation, discipline, and yes, deep love and draw to beauty, I have cultivated a profound love of classical music, great literature, ancient liturgy, silence, and even dense theology. It took time, but it wasn't a LARP for community. Anyone who has been deeply involved in any community realizes there are always big problems that require prudence, wisdom, and grace to navigate when sharing lives with others. My wife and I and our little girls genuinely love the liturgy we attend. We love the symphonies we play around the home. We love to learn and hear the choral pieces and chant at mass and in our ordinary life. We are reading the Odyssey together and loving it. We are loving the theology we read. Neither of us grew up in anything other than the most beige, suburban, liturgical emaciated experience of Christianity and yet here we are genuinely liking these things. Strange...
Both essays raise the question: for what Man, exactly, was the Mass of Paul VI meant? It must be a subset of Catholics, since many left as its principles were being implemented, which presaged the dash for the exits in 1969. I suppose it might be worthwhile to survey those Catholics who stayed to ask them what they like (or claim to like?) about the new forms, beyond the obvious language shift. I suspect one would come up with a narrowly defined temperament profile.
Yes, this in fact has been well described by Henry Sire in his excellent book "Phoenix from the Ashes," p. 264:
« By cutting off the life of the Church from a timeless tradition, the Modernists have immersed it in a contemporary social setting. The foible is especially noticeable in Germany, where the radicalism of the reformers has produced a parish Mass of comically bourgeois style; but that is the tone of the modern liturgy in all the Western countries. In an ordinary Mass today the sense one has is not the offering of an eternal sacrifice but a lecture conducted by the priest and two or three women of the public-librarian class, to whom the readings and other duties of the church are allocated. The verbosity and preachiness of the liturgy is itself a middle-class characteristic with which many ordinary parishioners feel little rapport; and the alienation of working-class worshippers, in a way that was never true of the old Mass in poor parishes, has become a peculiar feature of the liturgical reform. »
My only reservation to this is the claim (?) that Gen Z have been robbed by previous generations of wholesome traditions which includes the TLM, on purpose.
I was born in 67. I don't recall any real societal push to expunge traditions as I grew up. I would be more inclined not to blame particular generations, but to explore a prevailing zeitgeist driven by technological advancements and scientism from the 19th century through to present day. My gut feeling is that ordinary societies were swept along with change, and too much trust on their part and or or too much control by government and institutions facilitated sweeping change.
I’m not a GenZ but neither was I raised by any stretch of the imagination to appreciate the TLM. I was raised Protestant in an almost iconoclast splinter off of a Southern Baptist church.
But there is such a thing as grace which can’t be quantified. It exists outside psychological models and supersedes education and culture. I was guided along a winding road that led to the TLM during the pandemic. To begin with it was the only refuge of sanity where people weren’t cowering in fear and turning into zombified germaphobes.
Yes, the liturgy and ritual was foreign. It took months to feel somewhat comfortable and not like a spectator and years to feel what others would describe as emotional resonance. The way my husband and I look at is that we just did not know what we did not know. We strongly wish we had known sooner what was being made available when we first became parents. We would have liked to raise our family in the TLM and believe it would have provided valuable formation that was so desperately lacking in the Novus Ordo parishes in which our kids were raised.
Yes, entering into an experience that is foreign requires a shift not only in action but in being. When one enters the TLM an entire world view shift begins to unfold. The whole notion of what is God worthy of opened to me.
My whole life up to the TLM had been oriented to what I was worthy of. Was I following Christ closely enough? Was I doing enough to consider myself a Good Christian? Was I holy enough, faithful enough, obedient enough? The operative locus of my questions regarding spirituality and religion was “I” centric and I had not even realized that nor would I have admitted it if I had been accused of it.
The shift the TLM brought me was gradual but profound: its focus is God centric. Its form and ritual is not oriented to what is pleasing to the self but towards what is most pleasing to God.
That is an enormous shift. It is also amazingly freeing. It is a recognition that God, more than myself, is infinitely more capable of working to bring about my holiness than I am. My one job as a human being is to love and adore God who deserves all of my everything. And my everything is really so very insignificant because all the goodness that exists in my character comes from God and truly already belongs to him. That leaves me with only one true possession, my misery and suffering and He desires that too. Out of His supreme goodness He wants to take my nothingness and transform it into something of such a high order above even that of angels to have union and communion with the blessed Trinity.
That is the shift the TLM brought to me and I think to many others; a shift away from the ‘me’ oriented mindset that has miss informed our identity, our view of God and consequently our view of neighbor. When you begin participating in a rite that is oriented toward the majesty, mystery, and supreme holiness of God and the magnanimous generosity of His gift of self through Jesus’s supreme sacrifice on the cross and in the holy Eucharist which we have the great grace of receiving; it reorients your entire way of experiencing reality.
So even if you are not initially attracted to formal hierarchical structures, rigid rubrics, and medieval liturgy, those very attributes of the TLM are the very things that assist in that reorientation to a Theocentric spirituality so vastly freeing from the predominately self-centered spirituality our culture embraces.
There is an enormous freedom in understanding who is actually in control, Christ is King, He is in control and He is the fullness of both justice and mercy. He deserves the highest form of worship we can render. He deserves soaring cathedrals, Gregorian chant, elevated language, beauty, incense, and mystery. He is so good to allow us to participate in worshipping Him in such an exulted manner.
Our participation in His worship and anything we get out of it emotionally or experientially is secondary to what God is due. Yet, in giving Him the worship He is due we receive so much. God is generous with His Grace. We receive the fullness of Him in the Eucharist. We receive the boundless One who confines Himself within the bounds of bread. That is beyond the bounds of human comprehension. So does that not correspond to participating in a liturgy that is also beyond our understanding?
I think more and more people, especially those deprived of anything remotely treated as sacred are being drawn to the TLM precisely because as scripture describes it, God himself has placed eternity in our hearts and that is something neither education nor culture can erase. As the Psalmist declares, “Deep calls to deep amidst the roaring of the waves.”
An excellent response to the bizarre, almost gaslight-y assertions of the original post. My initial thoughts reading this piece as someone who's only a touch older than Gen Z:
1.) These types of articles don't strike me as being written for TLM attendees, but more for skeptics of traditionalism who wish to justify their stereotypes or unfounded assumptions about traditionalists. Those of us who attend the TLM already know our own reasons (both lofty and lowly) for doing so without being lectured by a third party who knows what we "really" think and feel.
2.) I'm grateful that I've spared my children so much of this nonsensical pathologizing by raising them in the TLM for as long as they can remember. Whatever unfounded assumptions one might make about me or my husband's reasons for valuing the TLM, my kids don't experience the Mass of the Ages as a novelty, a political statement, or a strange anachronism. They experience it simply as the Mass. Whatever strange explanations some might have for young adults who are drawn to the TLM, they'll have little relevance to the increasing number of young Catholics being born and raised within TLM communities.
The one thing I would strongly urge Catholic parents is to incorporate into homeschooling (or, for kids in schools, assign the reading of, or maybe even read aloud) a few books about the history, meaning, and importance of the traditional Mass. This would be when they are teens. The reason is, they need to have that instinctive acceptance of the TLM bolstered by sound information and arguments because when they get out into the world they will be greatly challenged and often tempted to try to fit in with their peers, or just give up the difficulty of being a persecuted minority.
My book "Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright" offers a lot of practical suggestions in this regard.
So what if the young do only THINK they like the Latin Mass? Aren't we all so broadminded nowadays that anyone has permission to think anything he likes? Except, of course, for those who think they don't like the fruits of Vatican II.
Whoever wrote that essay has spent too long in academia and was in search of something profound to say.
For some reason, this whole thing puts me in mind of Puddleglum's remarks to the witch in *The Silver Chair*: "Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things — trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow...."
Let the baby Gen-Zers have their play world. Because they're playing a long game, and in the end, the side they THINK they're picking will win.
You're absolutely correct that those of us who were raised in a degenerate culture may not immediately be attracted to good, true, and beautiful things. I attended my first TLM around the age of 17 and was very confused and a bit frustrated afterwards. I didn't understand and couldn't follow what was going on, and having grown up in a hyper-stimulated age, that was a problem. It was only after a long process of actually studying and experiencing the Roman rite (Breviary and all) that I was able to fall in love with it. I documented this at length in an article on my substack, "Why I Have Begun to Love the Traditional Roman Rite." I think some readers of Tradition and Sanity may be interested in checking it out.
The Latin Mass has grown on me. I wasn't sure what I thought about it at first. But as I learned to like better food, better music, better living, I also came to appreciate a better mass. Nevertheless, I've also come to better appreciate the Novus Ordo mass, too, and find something deep there I didn't at first think I could encounter. I don't know what to make of this except that I've come to believe that Catholicism doesn't need the smoke screens to produce the "feel goods", but also the smoke screens don't feel as fake as they might at a megga church. I like it all.
I attended the TLM for the first time in 2017 and it was like turning a kaleidoscope and watching all the pieces I had seen in the years at NO Masses reconfigure themselves into something more beautiful and arresting. It took years of regular attendance for the TLM to feel "normal" but it has gotten into my bones and I don't think it will ever leave. My kids have grown up with it and they have a (very opinionated) sense for beauty as a result.
What's crazy is that at the time of Paul VI a lot of people knew the formulas of the Latin mass by heart, and what they meant too. My grandmother did for sure.
However, to be completely fair to the VCII generation, it's hard for us to understand how they were shaped by the trauma of WWII. Paul VI was a key person in Pius XII's Vatican information office, a massive global operation connecting people who lost contact during the war and that processed millions of information requests, while actively helping people persecuted by the Jews. The entire VCII was haunted by the idea that WWII happened also as a consequence of a failure to evangelize.
I'm in a thriving Ambrosian New Rite (equivalent to the NO) parish, with thousands of families involved. Tomorrow, my eldest daughter is starting her experience as a junior summer oratory counselor (prayers appreciated) together with other 100 young people from the 9th degree to college, supervising 500 children from the 1st to the 8th degree.
We have many adult and teenager baptism, as well as young parishioners marrying, so I can't say that the NO - in it's peculiar Ambrosian form, is totally negative.
The traditional Amrosian rite is beautiful, and I like going. However parish life and being rooted in the community is more important. I think that bringing back Latin, ad orientem and kneeling for communion are simple changes - at least for High Mass, can build up the reverence, without necessarily denouncing VCII, which by the way privileged latin also in the NO.
I think that, 80 years after the end of WWII, we can start rethinking
the liturgy - including within the NO missal - to make it more reverent. Baby steps.
Even if everything you say about the historical context is true, that is still no justification for having departed from bimillennial tradition to the extent that the reform did.
The Ambrosian reform was much less severe than the Novus Ordo, but even so, the traditional Ambrosian rite should have been left in place.
Certainly, I am not saying there are no healthy parishes with the reformed rites. However, the general pattern in the West is ever downwards. The Church is getting smaller and smaller. And someday, the only ones left will be those who love tradition. At that point, perhaps the reformed rites will be gradually abandoned.
My point is to make historically understandable what otherwise seems to make no sense at all. It's not like Paul VI and his generation just went collectively insane. And sincerely I have a hard time thinking that VCII was without the assistance of the Holy Spirit and maybe there is a providential design for things to have unfolded as they did. Could it be that after those 50 years of liturgical drought the thirst for more reverence is that providential fruit?
Certainly, I'm not saying that God has not drawn good out of the evil. There is a greater hunger for and knowledge of and appreciation of tradition now than there seems to have been in the 1950s when it was all taken for granted. But this is a severe mercy and it has cost a lot of pain, and, one fears, the loss of many souls.
Hang on a minute! Didn't you read that part about that one guy who went to the TLM and he didn't like it? I'll paste it below since you obviously missed the MOST IMPORTANT argument. You see, there was this guy, and he confessed it. And that proves NEARLY ALL people PACKING the PEWS at the TLM feel EXACTLY the same way! Q.E.D.
"A young person walking into a TLM today brings the formation he has, and the formation he has is not the formation that the rite assumes. One CQ contributor, around 30 years of age, related his experience going from New Mass to Old Mass in recent years:
'I’m frustrated because, having attended Latin Mass, I know intellectually that it’s better, higher, and some part of me understands that it is objectively more beautiful.. but because I was raised on Marty Haugen and shit, the emotional resonance just isn’t there. It doesn’t feel like *home* yet, somehow.'
That is not a confession of failure. It is a description of nearly all the people packing pews at TLM’s."
I know, it's ridiculous. It would actually be comical, like a Three Stooges routine, if the matter were not of such importance for souls.
The TLM feels impenetrable to many starting out. Some come from it at an intellectual standpoint, like that gentleman. Others come from aesthetics and "get it" pretty much immediately.
Where it goes off is assuming the same seriousness and solidarity can be achieved with another liturgy, which I would argue is likely not the case. They are intertwined.
If one comes into the TLM with a desire for instant comprehension or emotional satisfaction, then one is approaching it with Novus Ordo expectations, and is bound to be confused or disappointed. But if one lets the TLM shape him according to its own priorities, its own "genius" - and this is the humble way, to be a disciple rather than trying to be a master - then its priorities become the soul's, and one is immensely enriched and blessed thereby.
I always say give it at least two months, three if you really want a fair shake. First month you don't even need to follow along with the missal if that is too high-stress. Then begin following along and by the end most people will find it to be a more enriching experience than the common parish.
Well sure, but Mrs. Berry's essay was so much longer and searching and delving than the simple but adequate rebuttal, "That's an evidently asinine claim with no supporting argument."
But the logic is (apparently?!): The guy wanted (to like) TLM for 'serious' reasons; but those aren't the 'real' reasons b/c what he 'really' wanted (was really looking for) was 'seriousness'...
Given how surprisingly popular it is to assert that the Latin Mass is no longer suited for modern people, it seems worthwhile to explore where that claim arises from and what are its numerous fallacies, as Prof. Berry did so well in her essay.
Sure. But to quote Mrs. Berry: (while brevity is the soul of wit (is it indeed?); and loquacity the soul of... the English professor?) "I have no argument whatsoever as to exactly how this works, or what its limitations are..."
This is an extremely fair criticism lol
Thanks! And to be clear, I take it to be a (substantive but playful) observation as much as (or more than) a criticism; and its object is Peter's defensive comment as much as (or more than) your essay.
Defensive criticism, ha, ha.
Confusion... oh, I think I see: I forgot there were two Peter's in play. To clarify, Peter Nelson, I was referring to Peter Kwasniewski's "defensive comment" in response to my critical observation.
I'll go even farther and assert that, to my ears at least, that was a self-evidently AI written blurb. Have you ever noticed how AI loves to produce this stylistic idiom?
"Ruminate on this factwit. That is not a something of somewhat. It is a muchwhich of muchwhat."
Some parts sounded AI written to me as well, but I ran it through GPT0 and Pangram and they didn't think so. Which might mean, you know, nothing.
Say what now?
Dear Prof. Berry, you are so on the money. It would be alarming if we felt emotionally rewarded, rather than challenged, with our first experience at the TLM. As a former teacher, I know that to be a better writer, we must, not write more, but read more. We are no longer reading. We are skimming. Summaries are too long for us. If we do not watch Laurel and Hardy at 8, we will not laugh with them at 16.
Yet, as a retiree, I have developed the habit of watching First Reactions To: Classical Music and Classic Movies from young adults, ((21-39). The genuine connection, they feel, involving, wide smiles and weeping, followed by gasps of wonder and cries of, " why didn't somebody tell me?" are almost too painful to bear.
Dr. K,I enjoyed this guest article so very much that I am (at the last minute!) renewing my subscription to T&S. I wasn't sure your T&S was what I needed now. I would like to read more from Esther Berry! She at age 25 sees through the frankly ridiculous and demonic arguments for banishing the TLM.
You deserve great blessings from God for tirelessly with your pen and speeches helping us weary Boomers keep fighting for the TLM rather than hope "someone else" will do what my parents (born in 1916 and 1923) didn't do anything about because they ”knew” it wouldn't do any good at that time.
I am 70 years old. I dont have much time left. I was formed by this Mass in Omaha until I was about 9 years old, then was forced to wander through a liturgical and catechetical wasteland until 2008 when I accidentally rediscovered the TLM in Charlotte at a diocesan Mass. I immediately realized this was the Mass that would feed my Faith for the rest of my life and be best for children.
I then moved to Santa Fe and bore all sorts of persecution in that archdiocese until I moved back to Omaha in 2021 to care for my dying mother. For 3 years I greatly enjoyed the FSSP parish there with Fr. Berg as pastor. Now that my mom died I have returned to CLT to be with my daughter.
Since the bishop of CLT destroyed the TLM in my former CLT parish and all local parishes, I finally researched the St Anthony of Padua SSPX chapel, the entire history of Abp. Lefebvre and watched many SSPX podcasts. I now see the huge differences between the SSPX and Ecclesia Dei and diocesan clergy preaching and making liturgical and preaching compromises in Novus Ordo fashion (much of it forced) to remain open under a diocesan bishop. For many reasons, the most important my being extremely motivated to HAND DOWN TO THE CHILDREN OF TODAY EXACTLY WHAT WAS ROBBED FROM ME, I have joined and am supporting an SSPX chapel. It provides the TLM and preaching and a website that denounces Modernist errors, but also cannot be closed down or tinkered with by a diocesan bishop.
I have not contributed much cash to Catholic churches over the past 30 years, because I knew it would be used against the True Catholic faith. NOW I am very comfortable contributing large amounts to this SSPX chapel to see and enjoy the fruits before I die!
Maryrose, Thank you for your kind words and your support of this Substack. I mean it when I say that without people like you, it would be impossible for me to carry on!
The rest of your remarks demonstrate, very effectively, why so many find the SSPX a refuge. The SSPX exists because of the constant criminal behavior of the hierarchy of the Church. There, I said it. But it's obviously true.
You're so kind Maryrose! God bless you.
When I encountered Christianity at 21 years old, I was a curious atheist- and lived the common life of a libertine young adult at a secular university in Australia.
Upon reading about the historicity of the crucifixion, I knew there was something afoot about Christianity that I had not considered. I church hopped- non denominational, charismatic, Presbyterian- all the various confessions. None of them had the depth of Truth that I was seeking.
Throughout this seeking experience, I began to pray to the Holy Spirit (if He was indeed there, as I thought He might be). It was a constant prayer:
“Holy Spirit, lead me to the Truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is”. I had an extremely progressive and anti-theist family, so I knew the harsh social consequences of this flirtation with religion. I knew I needed something concretely True.
I attended two new masses during this time. On both occasions, I left thinking Catholics were fake Christians. One attendee mentioned to me after Mass “oh we don’t go to confession after V2, maybe really only once or twice a year”. This came upon my prompting that EO Christian’s generally confessed before they took communion. At the other parish, not a single person knew what “transubstantiation” was, when I asked question about the Real Presence. I was dumbstruck at how Catholics seemingly didn’t know their religion.
The liturgy smelled like mothballs, and was completely banal. I got nothing from it, regarding religious education nor worship. I had given up on Catholics as a reputable religion, until my venting of this experience online led a fellow political enthusiast to comment “you need to attend a Latin Mass” and linked me to the local FSSP Parish.
I did attend said parish, Palm Sunday 2017. During the Mass, I was struck with an overwhelming burning feeling in my chest, and it was like God Himself took scales from my eyes. The tabernacle, the altar, the precise movements of the Priest, literally looked to me like the completed version of the Old Testament. I was overwhelmed with this sentiment:
“If Christianity is the true religion, this is the truest expression of that religion”.
If that isn’t the power of God’s Grace, I don’t know what is.
Anyone combatting the TLM’s ability to be a bridge of Grace to the modern world is a traitor to our King, honestly. AMDG+
I can relate to your story so much. Thank you for sharing it here. The traditional liturgy has deepened and expanded my faith in countless ways, and we are not alone, but the miracle is repeated again and again. And that is because the Lord has deposited within tradition a permanent power to express His mystery and to draw souls to Him.
Fantastic response. I, as a Zillenial dinosaur born in a year that begins with 19 rather than 20, who had a sort of half and half experience of a childhood not entirely shaped by the Internet but an adolescence completely absorbed by it and smart-technology, resonate profoundly with this. Over years of attentive cultivation, discipline, and yes, deep love and draw to beauty, I have cultivated a profound love of classical music, great literature, ancient liturgy, silence, and even dense theology. It took time, but it wasn't a LARP for community. Anyone who has been deeply involved in any community realizes there are always big problems that require prudence, wisdom, and grace to navigate when sharing lives with others. My wife and I and our little girls genuinely love the liturgy we attend. We love the symphonies we play around the home. We love to learn and hear the choral pieces and chant at mass and in our ordinary life. We are reading the Odyssey together and loving it. We are loving the theology we read. Neither of us grew up in anything other than the most beige, suburban, liturgical emaciated experience of Christianity and yet here we are genuinely liking these things. Strange...
Both essays raise the question: for what Man, exactly, was the Mass of Paul VI meant? It must be a subset of Catholics, since many left as its principles were being implemented, which presaged the dash for the exits in 1969. I suppose it might be worthwhile to survey those Catholics who stayed to ask them what they like (or claim to like?) about the new forms, beyond the obvious language shift. I suspect one would come up with a narrowly defined temperament profile.
Yes, this in fact has been well described by Henry Sire in his excellent book "Phoenix from the Ashes," p. 264:
« By cutting off the life of the Church from a timeless tradition, the Modernists have immersed it in a contemporary social setting. The foible is especially noticeable in Germany, where the radicalism of the reformers has produced a parish Mass of comically bourgeois style; but that is the tone of the modern liturgy in all the Western countries. In an ordinary Mass today the sense one has is not the offering of an eternal sacrifice but a lecture conducted by the priest and two or three women of the public-librarian class, to whom the readings and other duties of the church are allocated. The verbosity and preachiness of the liturgy is itself a middle-class characteristic with which many ordinary parishioners feel little rapport; and the alienation of working-class worshippers, in a way that was never true of the old Mass in poor parishes, has become a peculiar feature of the liturgical reform. »
'public-librarian class.' ROFL.
Great article, thanks.
My only reservation to this is the claim (?) that Gen Z have been robbed by previous generations of wholesome traditions which includes the TLM, on purpose.
I was born in 67. I don't recall any real societal push to expunge traditions as I grew up. I would be more inclined not to blame particular generations, but to explore a prevailing zeitgeist driven by technological advancements and scientism from the 19th century through to present day. My gut feeling is that ordinary societies were swept along with change, and too much trust on their part and or or too much control by government and institutions facilitated sweeping change.
I’m not a GenZ but neither was I raised by any stretch of the imagination to appreciate the TLM. I was raised Protestant in an almost iconoclast splinter off of a Southern Baptist church.
But there is such a thing as grace which can’t be quantified. It exists outside psychological models and supersedes education and culture. I was guided along a winding road that led to the TLM during the pandemic. To begin with it was the only refuge of sanity where people weren’t cowering in fear and turning into zombified germaphobes.
Yes, the liturgy and ritual was foreign. It took months to feel somewhat comfortable and not like a spectator and years to feel what others would describe as emotional resonance. The way my husband and I look at is that we just did not know what we did not know. We strongly wish we had known sooner what was being made available when we first became parents. We would have liked to raise our family in the TLM and believe it would have provided valuable formation that was so desperately lacking in the Novus Ordo parishes in which our kids were raised.
Yes, entering into an experience that is foreign requires a shift not only in action but in being. When one enters the TLM an entire world view shift begins to unfold. The whole notion of what is God worthy of opened to me.
My whole life up to the TLM had been oriented to what I was worthy of. Was I following Christ closely enough? Was I doing enough to consider myself a Good Christian? Was I holy enough, faithful enough, obedient enough? The operative locus of my questions regarding spirituality and religion was “I” centric and I had not even realized that nor would I have admitted it if I had been accused of it.
The shift the TLM brought me was gradual but profound: its focus is God centric. Its form and ritual is not oriented to what is pleasing to the self but towards what is most pleasing to God.
That is an enormous shift. It is also amazingly freeing. It is a recognition that God, more than myself, is infinitely more capable of working to bring about my holiness than I am. My one job as a human being is to love and adore God who deserves all of my everything. And my everything is really so very insignificant because all the goodness that exists in my character comes from God and truly already belongs to him. That leaves me with only one true possession, my misery and suffering and He desires that too. Out of His supreme goodness He wants to take my nothingness and transform it into something of such a high order above even that of angels to have union and communion with the blessed Trinity.
That is the shift the TLM brought to me and I think to many others; a shift away from the ‘me’ oriented mindset that has miss informed our identity, our view of God and consequently our view of neighbor. When you begin participating in a rite that is oriented toward the majesty, mystery, and supreme holiness of God and the magnanimous generosity of His gift of self through Jesus’s supreme sacrifice on the cross and in the holy Eucharist which we have the great grace of receiving; it reorients your entire way of experiencing reality.
So even if you are not initially attracted to formal hierarchical structures, rigid rubrics, and medieval liturgy, those very attributes of the TLM are the very things that assist in that reorientation to a Theocentric spirituality so vastly freeing from the predominately self-centered spirituality our culture embraces.
There is an enormous freedom in understanding who is actually in control, Christ is King, He is in control and He is the fullness of both justice and mercy. He deserves the highest form of worship we can render. He deserves soaring cathedrals, Gregorian chant, elevated language, beauty, incense, and mystery. He is so good to allow us to participate in worshipping Him in such an exulted manner.
Our participation in His worship and anything we get out of it emotionally or experientially is secondary to what God is due. Yet, in giving Him the worship He is due we receive so much. God is generous with His Grace. We receive the fullness of Him in the Eucharist. We receive the boundless One who confines Himself within the bounds of bread. That is beyond the bounds of human comprehension. So does that not correspond to participating in a liturgy that is also beyond our understanding?
I think more and more people, especially those deprived of anything remotely treated as sacred are being drawn to the TLM precisely because as scripture describes it, God himself has placed eternity in our hearts and that is something neither education nor culture can erase. As the Psalmist declares, “Deep calls to deep amidst the roaring of the waves.”
An excellent response to the bizarre, almost gaslight-y assertions of the original post. My initial thoughts reading this piece as someone who's only a touch older than Gen Z:
1.) These types of articles don't strike me as being written for TLM attendees, but more for skeptics of traditionalism who wish to justify their stereotypes or unfounded assumptions about traditionalists. Those of us who attend the TLM already know our own reasons (both lofty and lowly) for doing so without being lectured by a third party who knows what we "really" think and feel.
2.) I'm grateful that I've spared my children so much of this nonsensical pathologizing by raising them in the TLM for as long as they can remember. Whatever unfounded assumptions one might make about me or my husband's reasons for valuing the TLM, my kids don't experience the Mass of the Ages as a novelty, a political statement, or a strange anachronism. They experience it simply as the Mass. Whatever strange explanations some might have for young adults who are drawn to the TLM, they'll have little relevance to the increasing number of young Catholics being born and raised within TLM communities.
I agree 100%.
The one thing I would strongly urge Catholic parents is to incorporate into homeschooling (or, for kids in schools, assign the reading of, or maybe even read aloud) a few books about the history, meaning, and importance of the traditional Mass. This would be when they are teens. The reason is, they need to have that instinctive acceptance of the TLM bolstered by sound information and arguments because when they get out into the world they will be greatly challenged and often tempted to try to fit in with their peers, or just give up the difficulty of being a persecuted minority.
My book "Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright" offers a lot of practical suggestions in this regard.
Oh, for Pete's sake.
So what if the young do only THINK they like the Latin Mass? Aren't we all so broadminded nowadays that anyone has permission to think anything he likes? Except, of course, for those who think they don't like the fruits of Vatican II.
Whoever wrote that essay has spent too long in academia and was in search of something profound to say.
For some reason, this whole thing puts me in mind of Puddleglum's remarks to the witch in *The Silver Chair*: "Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things — trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow...."
Let the baby Gen-Zers have their play world. Because they're playing a long game, and in the end, the side they THINK they're picking will win.
I've always loved that speech of Puddleglum's.
You're absolutely correct that those of us who were raised in a degenerate culture may not immediately be attracted to good, true, and beautiful things. I attended my first TLM around the age of 17 and was very confused and a bit frustrated afterwards. I didn't understand and couldn't follow what was going on, and having grown up in a hyper-stimulated age, that was a problem. It was only after a long process of actually studying and experiencing the Roman rite (Breviary and all) that I was able to fall in love with it. I documented this at length in an article on my substack, "Why I Have Begun to Love the Traditional Roman Rite." I think some readers of Tradition and Sanity may be interested in checking it out.
Thank you very much for leaving this comment and directing me to your excellent article. I left a comment there, and also shared it. God bless you!
I'm glad you read "Turned Around." Please allow me to recommend my book "The Once and Future Roman Rite," which I consider my most important one.
https://osjustipress.com/products/the-once-and-future-roman-rite
Excellent. Spot on. Thank you.
The Latin Mass has grown on me. I wasn't sure what I thought about it at first. But as I learned to like better food, better music, better living, I also came to appreciate a better mass. Nevertheless, I've also come to better appreciate the Novus Ordo mass, too, and find something deep there I didn't at first think I could encounter. I don't know what to make of this except that I've come to believe that Catholicism doesn't need the smoke screens to produce the "feel goods", but also the smoke screens don't feel as fake as they might at a megga church. I like it all.
I attended the TLM for the first time in 2017 and it was like turning a kaleidoscope and watching all the pieces I had seen in the years at NO Masses reconfigure themselves into something more beautiful and arresting. It took years of regular attendance for the TLM to feel "normal" but it has gotten into my bones and I don't think it will ever leave. My kids have grown up with it and they have a (very opinionated) sense for beauty as a result.
Latin connects us to 2000 years of history. English just connects us to dreary protestantism and the daily grind.
What's crazy is that at the time of Paul VI a lot of people knew the formulas of the Latin mass by heart, and what they meant too. My grandmother did for sure.
However, to be completely fair to the VCII generation, it's hard for us to understand how they were shaped by the trauma of WWII. Paul VI was a key person in Pius XII's Vatican information office, a massive global operation connecting people who lost contact during the war and that processed millions of information requests, while actively helping people persecuted by the Jews. The entire VCII was haunted by the idea that WWII happened also as a consequence of a failure to evangelize.
I'm in a thriving Ambrosian New Rite (equivalent to the NO) parish, with thousands of families involved. Tomorrow, my eldest daughter is starting her experience as a junior summer oratory counselor (prayers appreciated) together with other 100 young people from the 9th degree to college, supervising 500 children from the 1st to the 8th degree.
We have many adult and teenager baptism, as well as young parishioners marrying, so I can't say that the NO - in it's peculiar Ambrosian form, is totally negative.
The traditional Amrosian rite is beautiful, and I like going. However parish life and being rooted in the community is more important. I think that bringing back Latin, ad orientem and kneeling for communion are simple changes - at least for High Mass, can build up the reverence, without necessarily denouncing VCII, which by the way privileged latin also in the NO.
I think that, 80 years after the end of WWII, we can start rethinking
the liturgy - including within the NO missal - to make it more reverent. Baby steps.
Even if everything you say about the historical context is true, that is still no justification for having departed from bimillennial tradition to the extent that the reform did.
The Ambrosian reform was much less severe than the Novus Ordo, but even so, the traditional Ambrosian rite should have been left in place.
Certainly, I am not saying there are no healthy parishes with the reformed rites. However, the general pattern in the West is ever downwards. The Church is getting smaller and smaller. And someday, the only ones left will be those who love tradition. At that point, perhaps the reformed rites will be gradually abandoned.
My point is to make historically understandable what otherwise seems to make no sense at all. It's not like Paul VI and his generation just went collectively insane. And sincerely I have a hard time thinking that VCII was without the assistance of the Holy Spirit and maybe there is a providential design for things to have unfolded as they did. Could it be that after those 50 years of liturgical drought the thirst for more reverence is that providential fruit?
Certainly, I'm not saying that God has not drawn good out of the evil. There is a greater hunger for and knowledge of and appreciation of tradition now than there seems to have been in the 1950s when it was all taken for granted. But this is a severe mercy and it has cost a lot of pain, and, one fears, the loss of many souls.