Bishop’s Challenge (plus full text)
Full text of letter:
18 February 2024
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. He is the authority in his Dioceses for his faithful. He is the one who should decide what is spiritually beneficial for his faithful. Are almost all of you afraid of the Roman Curia? If you are removed like Bishop Strickland, so be it. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that obedience to tyrannical demands is not tenable. If enough Bishops resist, they have great power staying united together in a group of virtuous stalwarts. In 16th Century England, only 1 Bishop out of 30 resisted King Henry VIII. St. John Fisher stood up for marriage and the Latin Mass of the Ages. In 1569, the Nobles of Northumberland fought against Queen Elizabeth I in favor of the Traditional Latin Mass and against the English Anglican Liturgy.
Our exorcists are repeatedly telling us that the demons hate and fear Latin. I would hope you all would neither be a willing nor negligent accomplice to the powers of Hell.
Many faithful have run their own businesses for years. They would never deny their customers their best selling product! That would be economic suicide. Seeing the TLMs around the country being arbitrarily shut down looks like spiritual suicide to me. Do you, as a Bishop, want to spend the final years of your Episcopacy presiding over the continued hemorrhaging of our faithful? Do you listen to your faithful who love the TLM and its history of fruitfulness? Do you have eyes to see and ears to hear? Are we the only segment of the Church that gets no paternal affection and care? The fruitfulness of any Mass should attest to its veracity or mendacity.
The vocations to the priesthood in TLM parishes is 6-7 times greater depending on the Diocese. To date, I have been assigned in 5 parishes that offered both Masses on the same Sunday schedule. The Novus Ordo Mass had exponentially far more attendees than the Traditional Latin Mass at every parish. The vocations results were 15 TLM to 0 NOM. In my 28 years as a priest, I have had 29 Spiritual Directees who have discerned the Priesthood or the Religious Life. 28 TLM and 1 NOM. 7 of the TLM left formation before their final vows or ordinations. The 1 NOM was ordained a priest and then left the Priesthood. So it’s 21 TLM to 0 NOM still continuing in their formation or vows.
Please any Bishop reading this; prove to me that I am wrong about the negative growth of the NOM and the positive growth of the TLM where it is not indiscriminately smashed. Let them stand side by side. Let the faithful decide. Please stop aiding anyone, perhaps you yourself, who is putting his finger on the scale to his own benefit. There should be no place for Egoism (Bishops who are jealous of the success of the TLM), no place for an Experimental Mass that has not worked, no place for the Effeminacy (the feminine Liturgy of the NOM as opposed to the masculine Liturgy of the TLM) that has undermined the Son of Man Incarnate on the Altar.
Why does it appear that the lone fruitful sector of the Church is being ignored? I once heard a man say that he didn’t care if the priest spoke Martian as long as the Holy Faith was bolstered. The Latin Rite is the name of our Western Church. Latin reverses the curse of the Tower of Babel. It gives us one universal language. It seems to me that we need more unity, not the squelching of the Spirit of our forefathers.
Fr. Donald Kloster
Diocese of Bridgeport
No comments:
Post a Comment