Hmmmm, somehow I don’t think the Latin Mass will bring ‘em back.
This author speaks to BOTH the liberal and the conservative Roman Catholic explanations...finding them BOTH inadequate, when people who’ve left are actually asked.
The TLM and "a reverent liturgy celebrated according to the mind of the church" aren't synonymous in my mind. (You can have the second without the first, and sometimes even the first without the second.)
What isn't going to bring people or hold on to them is a faith dumbed-down to the 8th grade level, both liturgically and doctrinally. And that's what we've got in most parishes today. (Not mine, thanks be to God)
If we had a like button I would have hit it for this
If we had a like button I would have hit it for this
If we had a like button I would have hit it for this
I think the author misses the point entirely. The liturgy is the expression of belief. As they say: "lex credendi est lex orandi." We must simply acknowledge that those who left do so because they do not believe what is professed in the liturgy. Simply keeping Catholics in the pews is rather pointless if they don't believe the faith professed in the liturgy. Making the litury more "fun" and "interesting" is beside the point if it does not ultimately express the ancient faith of the Church - which seems to be what many Catholic liberals want.
It is no wonder fewer Catholics believe in transubstantiation today, and it is probably the case that those who left did not; for if those who left had and did, they never would have left the Catholic Church - no matter how bad they perceived the liturgy to be - for the empty, merely symbolic passing of bread in protestant churches.
There are probably multiple reasons for this apostasy, some of the causes the author of the article seems to deny - but I suggest poor catechesis is near the top, if not at the top. The very argument over good Latin translations into English is an important, needed step to insure the maxim" already quoted - "lex credendi est lex orandi." Thus, it goes to the heart of the problem the author does not seem to comprehend, having gotten lost in statistics.