Pope’s Restrictions Spark Resurgence of Interest in Traditional Mass Among Youth

National Catholic Register ^ | June 9, 2023 | Edward Pentin

[nickcarraway]

Two French Catholic writers analyze how Traditionis Custodes is fueling a Traditional Mass movement among young Catholics

The authors of two articles published in the progressive French Catholic daily La Croix have drawn attention to how Pope Francis’ restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass have fueled a growth in support for the ancient liturgy among young Catholics, producing the opposite effect to what was intended and posing a dilemma for bishops and for Rome.

In a June 4 article headlined “Young Trads: ‘Bishops Must Seek a New Balance,’” French Catholic historian Christophe Dickès recalled a video, made soon after Pope Francis imposed sweeping restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass with his July 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, in which a group of young French Catholics made clear their love for the old form of the Mass was not ideological.

They were not “grumpy, old fashioned, and even less, separatist,” Dickès observed, but were instead attached to the traditional rite because of its “transcendence, its verticality, and its orientation towards the East.” There was no desire to dissent, he said, but rather they addressed the Pope, saying: “We are your sheep.”

But he noted that almost two years later, Rome has rejected such appeals.

“Worse still,” Dickès said, “legal blindspots” in Traditionis Custodes led to further restrictions via Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, who “had the Pope sign another text reducing episcopal power in this area to almost nothing” — what Dickès described as “squeezing the lemon until the pips squeak.”

He was referring to two particular measures, a responsa ad dubia document issued in December 2021 and a rescript in February 2023, both severely limiting a bishop’s authority in granting permission to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass and instead concentrating authority in Rome.

[fidelis]

That's how young people are. If you tell them not to do something, then they want to try it all the more.

Just like with the Trans movement, people lately seem to be pushing back here and there when the Big Red Line has finally been crossed. If so, that's a hopeful trend.

[MDLION]

There’s just something about the casualness with which the Novus Ordo is celebrated at times which can make one yearn for the solemnity with which the Latin Mass is celebrated. So much yacking in church before Mass. The priest on Sunday (Corpus Christi) said that a Pew poll a few years back showed that only 31% of those who profess to be Catholic believe in the Real Presence whereas 69% do not. So the bishops have started a three year campaign in an effort to stoke a Eucharistic revival.

[CharlesOConnell]

Most to the point, they have kids. Lots of kids. Go into any the choir loft of church that has one, that has a novus ordo congregation, you will see old, Vatican II dinosaur gray-heads, but hardly any kids. I am 68, I socialize with elderly people at my TLM parish. At social events, where everyone shows up, there are hardly any elderly people, but scads of kids. We are out breeding the novus order. When the novus order finishes jumping over the lemming cliff, we will be there to start new cathedrals.

[nicollo]

That's how young people are. If you tell them not to do something, then they want to try it all the more.

I'm sure there's that, but it's more -- the kids crave decorum and tradition, which has been appropriated from their lives. They find it in abundance at TLM.

I know two yutes who are learning Latin on their own because of it -- not just for Mass, but for the language and its riches in Church history.

[fidelis]

I agree.