From Easthampton, in the Connecticut River valley of Massachusetts, comes this fantastic report on the power of the Traditional Latin Mass for a new generation of young Catholics and their large families.
Main excerpts, from the Daily Hampshire Gazette:
EASTHAMPTON — It’s a fallacy to say that young people are only into new things.
Despite push back from the Vatican against traditional Catholics in recent years, young people in particular are leading a movement to restore many of the rituals that went to the wayside over the past 60 years.
Throughout the 1960s, newspapers and the media chronicled the changes that were sweeping across Catholic churches around the world following the Second Vatican Council — a meeting of the world’s bishops held to bring the 2,000-year-old institution into the modern world.
Statues and towering altars were removed, replaced by white walls and simple tables. Rituals were revised to make celebrations more relevant and accessible for a modern audience.
The story today, however, is the reversal of that trend as more and more Catholics turn back to the traditional Latin Mass, with all of its smells and bells. This form of Mass was the official ritual of the church from the 16th century until 1969.
Locally, the only priest in the Diocese of Springfield, which covers all of western Massachusetts, to hold a Latin Mass is the Rev. Ryan Sliwa of Our Lady of the Valley parish in Easthampton. The rite to hold such a Mass is limited in each diocese by bishops.
This month, Sliwa explained the appeal before preparing to celebrate the ancient ritual, which draws people from around the region, including Northampton, Southwick, and Connecticut.
His celebrations on Sundays, which are sung with a choir of half a dozen teenage girls, draw some 90 people every week, with numbers reaching as many as 130 churchgoers. This is an increase from more than five years ago when he was saying the traditional Mass in Agawam that would draw 75 or 80 people.
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Among the changes that were introduced beginning in the 1960s is the priest facing the people.
This, said Sliwa, makes the celebration a “lot more horizontal” by making the focus on the gathered community.
He finds facing his flock in the pews, rather than the back wall of the church, where the image of Christ on the cross and sacred images are placed, disorienting.
“It’s like driving a bus backwards,” he said.
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Another appeal for attendees is the richness of the prayers. McGlaughlin, for one, said it astounds him to see how many prayers were removed.
“There’s so much said that isn’t in our Mass now,” he said.
“The new Mass shortened a lot of prayers, and there’s just so much meaning in all these words,” said Claudia Natale, another parishioner. “Some people say, ‘well, I don’t know Latin,’ but I don’t know Latin either, but in the missal it is in English and Latin, and there are sidebars for explanations.”
She further praised the use of Latin because it is a dead language and is not subject to change. She said Latin has strengthened the unity of Catholic celebrations for centuries.
“Before the new Mass you could go anywhere in the world and the Mass would be the same. it would be the same words, the same actions taking place,” said Natale.
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Attendees range in ages, but the pulse of the Latin Mass movement is overwhelmingly young.
William Labrie, a young husband, brought his wife and four daughters.
“We’re trying to get a connection back of what came before us as a family. So we kind of fell in love with it,” Labrie said.
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Sliwa speculates young people in particular are “done with the silliness,” which is drawing them to the traditional rituals. Silliness includes a relativistic American culture without moral guardrails. And it’s not all about ritual and formality in church. Sliwa, for instance, is not on social media and doesn’t have a TV.
People who seek out the Latin Mass want something militaristic, consistent and devotional … even eternal, he said.
Sliwa, who himself is a young priest and didn’t discover the traditional Mass until about 10 years ago, said about the current popular culture that, “We’ve been sold a false bill of goods.” ... [Source and full piece.]
