The actuarial tables have at long last caught up with the Modernist movement that tried and failed to subvert the Church.
According to a recent report from AP News, the Catholic Church is going back to the traditions of her illustrious past.
Across the U.S., the Catholic Church is undergoing an immense shift. Generations of Catholics who embraced the modernizing tide sparked in the 1960s by Vatican II are increasingly giving way to religious conservatives who believe the church has been twisted by change, with the promise of eternal salvation replaced by guitar Masses, parish food pantries and casual indifference to church doctrine.
The AP neglected to identify exactly which traditional Catholics are complaining that food pantries have twisted the Church. Nonetheless, their reporting that secularized music in the liturgy and doctrinal indifferentism present widespread concerns among the faithful is valid.
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The progressive priests who dominated the U.S. church in the years after Vatican II are now in their 70s and 80s. Many are retired. Some are dead. Younger priests, surveys show, are far more conservative.
“They say they’re trying to restore what us old guys ruined,” said the Rev. John Forliti, 87, a retired Twin Cities priest who fought for civil rights and reforms in Catholic school sex education.
But this is not a simple story. Because there are many who welcome this new, old church.
They often stand out in the pews, with the men in ties and the women sometimes with the lace head coverings that all but disappeared from American churches more than 50 years ago. Often, at least a couple families will arrive with four, five or even more children, signaling their adherence to the church’s ban on contraception, which most American Catholics have long casually ignored.
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But look deeper.
Because at Benedictine, Catholic teaching on contraception can slip into lessons on Plato, and no one is surprised if you volunteer for 3 a.m. prayers. Pornography, pre-marital sex and sunbathing in swimsuits are forbidden.
If these rules seem like precepts of a bygone age, that hasn’t stopped students from flocking to Benedictine and other conservative Catholic colleges.
At a time when U.S. college enrollment is shrinking, Benedictine’s expansion over the last 15 years has included four new residence halls, a new dining hall and an academic center. An immense new library is being built. The roar of construction equipment never seems to stop.
Enrollment, now about 2,200, has doubled in 20 years.
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For decades, many traditional Catholics have wondered if the church would – and perhaps should – shrink to a smaller but more faithful core.
In ways, that’s how St. Maria Goretti looks today. The 6:30 a.m. Friday Mass, Rouleau says, is increasingly popular among young people. But once-packed Sunday Masses now have empty pews. Donations are down. School enrollment plunged.
Some who left have gone to more liberal parishes. Some joined Protestant churches. Some abandoned religion entirely.
But [Fr. Scott] Emerson insists the Catholic Church’s critics will be proven wrong.
“How many have laughed at the church, announcing that she was passe, that her days were over and that they would bury her?” he said in a 2021 Mass.
“The church,” he said, “has buried every one of her undertakers.”
Thanks to Isaac Young for his thread about this report on X.
As even secular media suggest, the Catholic Church has once again defeated her enemies by letting them break their fists on her face.
Time is on traditional believers’ side. Due to their patience and endurance, the Catholic Church is going back to her evergreen teachings.
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