09 May 24 – Comparison of the New Mass and the TLM

To the Catholic Bishops: The truth of our much lamented position as the Church is in the sacramental records.  This is specifically found in the change of the priest to faithful ratio over the last 54 years. This ratio is as telling as it gets.  Obviously, the lower the priest to faithful ratio, the more the Mystical Body of Christ is served.  The larger the ratio, the harder it becomes for the faithful to go to Mass, have their Confessions heard, or to have a meaningful contact with priests at all. In 1970, the year that the Novus Ordo Mass was introduced, we had 59,192 USA priests and around 52 million Catholics or about 1:881.  Today we have around 28,000 priests and 72 million Catholics or about 1:2,571.  We have 1/3 the priests that we had right after the unexpected innovation of the Novus Ordo Mass.  In the 5 plus decades since 1970, the ratio of priests to faithful has never gotten better; it keeps cratering. The Catholic Church is in dire straits.  In the 1950’s we had approximately 80% of our Catholics attending Sunday Mass.  In 1980, it was about 50%.  By 1990, it was around 40%, and by 2000 it was about 33%.  By 2019, it had fallen to 20%.  Currently, a Diocese is fortunate to count 8%, of those who identify as Catholics, attending Sunday Mass.  No company lets its main product keep tanking year to year much less decade over decade.  The Bishops, as stewards of the Holy Faith, should intuitively reevaluate the consequences of the changes in the Holy Mass. There have been two important studies on the Traditional Latin Mass (2019 and 2020).  These TLM faithful live in the exact same society as their Novus Ordo Mass fellow Catholics.  The falling numbers in all things Catholic Church related, are not due to the societal moral and theological rot.  The TLM faithful go to Mass at a 97% clip and give 5 times more money per capita.  These figures were reviewed and verified by Dr. Froehle who ran CARA, a national church research center at Georgetown University, for many years.  You, as Bishops, can’t say anymore that no one wants the TLM.  That’s what we heard time and again when I was in the seminary in the early 1990’s.  Not only do people want the TLM, they know it is the lone protective cover from the assaults of Satan.  Every other religious practice is being demolished.  Practicing Christians or any modern religion, is ceding to a non-practice and/or a type of atheistic godlessness.   To me, it is nefarious to insinuate that the Novus Ordo Mass can even exist in the future.  The Novus Ordo Mass is stuck in a 1960’s time warp.  It neither resembles our Traditional Liturgy nor does it remotely approach any Eternal reality test. Some Bishops believe that an oriented Novus Ordo in Latin is the answer.  They want to coax or massage a belief that the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin will satiate the TLM faithful; not so as it is spiritually a far weaker imitation.  The problem is that this idea has already been tried and failed.  I will say that the Novus Ordo in Latin is far better than the Novus Ordo in the Vernacular.  However, it will just be a slower bleed.  The Novus Ordo Mass in Latin has no upside growth, no vocations increase.  It is still a breach of an over 1,930 year Holy Mass, from the Apostles, tradition. Why on earth would a Catholic Prelate allow growing Traditional Latin Masses in his Diocese to be canceled?  What harm have these people done?  Do they give too much to the collection?  Do they get married too often?  Do they come to Sunday Masses too regularly?  Do they have too many Catholic children because they are not practicing contraception?  We know that 89% of normal NOM attending women agree with contraception and only 2% of TLM women agree with contraception.  The overarching contraception mentality in the Novus Ordo speaks volumes as to the atrophy it engenders.  These Masses seem to produce two different religions. A sitting Prelate of the Catholic Church is not a Vicar of Rome.