UPDATED, UPDATED, UPDATED!The Church in Crisis — and How We Must Not Save Her: Twelve Issues (Bishop Robert Mutsaerts)
The Church in Crisis — and How We Must Not Save Her
Twelve Issues, Uncomfortable Truths, and a Catholic Way Forward
"The Church does not exist for itself": Leo XIV calls on Rome for a pastoral approach that truly leads to Christ
Pope Leo gave a very good talk to the priests of His Holiness’ Diocese, Rome. But because His Holiness is the Bishop of Rome, thus the Universal Pastor, His Holiness is speaking to all priests and bishops of the world.
You can read His Holiness’ full presentation HERE. But this is what I want to focus upon in terms of evaluating what has happened to the Church in the last 60 years:
To verify, under the light of the Holy Spirit, means to stop, to reread what has happened, to recognize what has borne fruit, to understand what has not worked, and to seek together the reasons. It means, in a word, to make truth. I invite you to carry out this verification by involving the whole community and, as far as possible, also listening to people who do not frequent it and see things, so to speak, «from outside.»
1. Has the liturgical rearrangement accomplished any real renewal? Yes, there is more active participation but not necessarily actual participation, meaning internal conversion, contemplation and experiencing the Transcendent. It isn’t the vernacular that has done this, but dumbing down the Mass, the loss of sacred silence while ritual and prayer is happening, standing to receiving Holy Communion with the hand and on the run and allowing anyone and everyone to distribute Holy Communion and usually not wearing their Sunday Best, their most modest Sunday best.
2. What has happened to religious life? For women’s orders who changed everything and usually using a synodal way to do it—they are on life support today about to disappear altogether. Is there a way to turn that around? Yes, but few are willing but the Nashville Dominicans is a good example!
3. Only those dioceses in the world that are traditional and orthodox are seeing vocations to the priesthood. Charleston, SC has more seminarians and ordinations with much fewer Catholics than Chicago but far more seminarians and ordinations than Chicago and Charlotte, NC does too, although the new bishop there may bring Chicago to Charlotte!
4. We all know that Vatican II was imposed upon the Church in the most pre-Vatican II way in the late 1960’s and most of the 1970’s. Authoritarianism reigned supreme to take a hammer to all that was pre-Vatican II, humiliating the faith and piety of pre-Vatican II Catholics who did not want to change or resented being made to change. We saw that returning during Pope Francis’ Magisterium especially with the Holy Father’s animus towards those young and old who prefer pre-Vatican II ethos and liturgies. Alienating these Catholics in a new way is not missionary or evangelization and continues to lead to the loss of Catholics joining schismatic sects.
5. In 1965 in the USA, nearly 90% of Catholics attended Sunday Mass and made their Easter Duty. Today, maybe 5% to 12% of Catholics attended Sunday Mass and make their Easter duty and fewer are getting married in the Church. We can’t just blame secular sociological changes and mores, but the Church's own destruction of its pre-Vatican II form, which in no way can be called renewal or even purification of its more rigid aspects, but wholesale destruction of it to create something else.
Any other evaluations?
15 comments:
Re: "We can’t just blame secular sociological changes and mores, but the Church's own destruction of its pre-Vatican II form, which in no way can be called renewal or even purification of its more rigid aspects, but wholesale destruction of it to create something else."
Well, here are the top five reasons given by former Catholics in a May 5-11, 2025, survey when asked why they left the Church;
1. I stopped believing in the religion's teachings
2. Scandals involving clergy or religious leaders
3. I was unhappy about the religion's teachings about social and political issues
4. My spiritual needs were not being met
5. It just wasn't important to my life
"Changes to the liturgy" was not among the top 12 reasons given.
So, as much as you want to place the lion's share of the blame on the versus populum celebration, the language used in the liturgy, the absence of Gregorian, etc., that simply not what the actual data indicates.
Thank you for brilliantly confirming my post! All these negative things are from the present day post Vatican II Church. I suspect too, that those TLM communities would put banal liturgies with no Gregorian Chant or transcendence at the top for their preference for the TLM and clear expectations and not liturgical absurdities. Kudos to you, you are maturing!
those 5 reasons probably come from folks with no memory of the pre Vatican Church. I had two uncles who quit because they did not like the changes to the Mass which started fast and furious in 1965
Cause can exist without being recognized. While correlation does not equal causation, it is evidence. After two thousand years of the Catholic faith there was a massive falling off of the faith after Vatican II and the introduction of the new Mass. Only a fool or a dishonest person would ignore this. Nor should it come as a surprise. The underlining change in all of the reforms was a moving away of an understanding of the Mass as the work of God, a re-presentation of the one Sacrifice of our Lord, to being more about the work of the congregation, a celebration of the gathered faithful. That this caused a loss of faith should be no surprise and was indeed was predicted by some.
One might discount this if it were not for the present gulf in belief and practice between those who go to the new Mass and those who go to the old. The TLM is attracting and feeding those who are seeking to worship God rather than celebrate the gathered Church. By their fruits you shall know them.
Father Anthony,
K of the Dwindling Parish is just too stubborn and lazy to change course at this stage. But enough about him. What is stunning is that the Vatican is doubling down on failure and ignoring that the TLM is a marvelous tool to reinvigorate the Faith. There was NO need to change the Mass. This was the conceit of vain, bored, intellectually dishonest clerics.
Correlation is not evidence. "The rooster crowed, then the sun rose." The events are correlative, but the crowing rooster is not in any way a cause for the rising sun. Only a fool or a dishonest person thinks otherwise. Cause, if it is present, can be demonstrated.
After 2000 years all of western culture went through massive shifts in relationships (see Rerum Novarum) beginning in the 1700's, including the relationship of people to their respective religions/faith traditions. The Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution are, I suggest, the two most impactful. And that impact has continued to play out.
As a result of these changes we in the west don't paint paintings the way we did in the 1500's. We don't build buildings the way we did in the 1600's. We don't write music the way we did in the 1700's. We don't communicate intercontinentally the way we did in the 1800's. We don't wear the fashions we did in the 1900's.
Only a fool thinks that these changes, and the RATES of these changes, have not had a profound impact on the ways we relate to God, to our communities, and to each other. Only a fool draws conclusions from assumptions that ALWAYS suit is preconceptions and prejudices. Only a fool thinks that there is or even should be some insulation that keeps cultural influences separate from religious Truths.
Only a fool says that the way to build up the Kingdom of God is to revert to the building practices of yore.
One might ask whether fundamentally the division is found between those who believe in revelation and those who do not. Since the upheaval of 1960s what support has been given to this necessary belief in the 'Revelation' in Christ Jesus.
Fr. Kavanaugh, there is causation between the rooster's crow and the sunrise. We just have to correctly identify which is the cause and which is the effect. The sunrise makes the rooster crow.
When looking at the effect of the changes in the liturgy had on belief it is not just a question of saying they happened at the same time therefore one must have caused the other. Rather, there were significant changes in the liturgy that refocused what it was all about. Taken together they moved the focus of Jesus Christ acting through the priest in presenting his sacrifice to the Father on our behalf to the action of the assembly gathered around a table to celebrate a common meal as a sign of fellowship. It is not just a question of correlation.
There is also the testimony of countless Catholics of the trauma that the changes caused and the continuing complaints of a lack of reverence. You discount these because they do not fit your ideology. Just because you think that these things should not have happened does not mean that they did not.
Finally, there is the evidence, which you ignore, of the massive difference in belief and practice between those to go the old Mass and those who go to the new. Just one example: the much higher rate of vocations. The FSSP has to turn away applicants while whole diocese have none. How many diocese in the US now rely on foreign priests just to survive? Thus, cause is demonstrated by the higher rates of attendance, belief, and vocations among those who return to the old Mass.
You speak of changes in society as the cause but you ignore that the changes in the liturgy were among those changes. And one last point, you constantly discount the usefulness of returning to the old liturgy but you have never once explained why the old Mass should be suppressed. Why not allow the two forms of the Mass to exist side-by-side?
The highlighted quote from Pope Leo sounds good. BUT, if the evidence from synodal gatherings thus far is that: 1) very few people will be involved; 2) those "on the outside" will not include TLM adherents; 3) The "public phase" will be for show; 4) The more meaningful discussions will be by invitation only; 5) The invitations will ensure the desired outcomes.
This bishop gets it. The money quote about the Liturgy which our resident deniers will continue to deny:
A Catholic Mass is not primarily a gathering in which the community celebrates its sense of togetherness. It is the sacrifice of Christ made sacramentally present. It is not a meal in the form of a sacrifice, but a sacrifice in the form of a meal. That changes everything. When that is truly believed, what follows is natural: reverence, kneeling, silence, beauty, care, sacred music, and a priest who does not assume the liturgy is improved by the spontaneous insertion of a funny anecdote. The Holy Spirit has many gifts. Improvisational theater at the altar does not, to my knowledge, figure among the seven.
A word for my brother bishops: Do not automatically treat attachment to the traditional liturgy as a psychiatric condition. Not every young Catholic who loves Latin is a covert agent from 1957. When young people are drawn to Gregorian chant, silence, incense, kneeling, ad orientem celebration, and classical spirituality, do not immediately ask: "What has gone wrong here?" Ask instead: "What are they seeking here that they cannot find elsewhere?"
Anthony - Roosters crow at all hours of the day, sunrise, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, even at night. The rising sun doesn't cause the rooster to crow. It is the rooster's circadian rhythm, a built-in-clock, that triggers crowing, even if the rooster is in complete darkness. There is NO causal effect between the rooster's crow and the rising sun, one way or the other. Heck, there's not even correlvance.
Vatican Two codified the development of the Church's ecclesiology that had been brewing for over a century. Emphasizing the role of the laity in the celebration of the mass was intended and necessary and was the point of SC. As Msgr. Arthur Holquin has written, "The Vetus Ordo, for all its genuine sanctity and however dutifully reformed by St. Pius V and Pius XII, nevertheless embodied, for all intents and purposes, that same clericalist ecclesiology: a liturgy enacted by the priest on behalf of a largely silent, spectating people." (Msgr. Holquin is commenting on a piece by Dr. Shaun Blanchard that can be found here: https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/traditionis-custodes-at-5-years/)
As for "...countless Catholics of the trauma that the changes caused..." Once again, the tyranny of "feelings" come into play. (Would "countless" by 50? 500? 5000?) They felt traumatized. Well, so did Catholics who wanted to continue worshipping in Greek as the Church has done for nearly three centuries before Latin was adopted. The Catholics who adhered to the notion of synodality a la the Orthodox Church were "traumatized" when a monarchical papacy became the norm. And were they "traumatized" Catholics negatively impacted by seeing that nuns had hair? Oh Tempura! Oh Morays!
As for "suppression" of the old rite, a rite that is not wanted by the vast majority of parishioners should not be imposed on them in a most clericalist way because Fr. X wants to celebrate HIS mass that way.
Lots of people are attracted by Smells and Bells. Candidates are attracted to a "conservative" bishop may bypass a dozen or so dioceses on the way to find safe haven. Most vocation directors know to be wary of these types who seek, not necessarily a place of sacrificial service, but a place of sacramental safety.
This pope gets it: "In Pope Benedict XVI’s theology, the Eucharist is a sacrifice because it is the sacrifice of the cross, made accessible to human beings forever through the eucharistic prayer. It is also a meal, however, precisely because the divine sacrifice completes itself in a community meal that also obliges Christians to ethical service and communal love."
From the post-synodal exhortation of Benedict XVI "Sacramentum Caritatis:"
"In the bread and wine under whose appearances Christ gives himself to us in the paschal meal (cf. Lk 22:14-20; 1 Cor 11:23-26), God's whole life encounters us and is sacramentally shared with us. God is a perfect communion of love between Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
Our task is to appreciate BOTH essential aspects of the mass, not to favor or overemphasize one at the expense of the other.
Fr. Kavanaugh, yes, roosters crow because of an internal circadian rhythm but the sunrise acts to reset the clock. So there is a causal effect between sunrise the rooster's crow. Correlation may not be proof but it is a data point that cannot be so cavalierly rejected.
Vatican II did not call for the emphasizing the role of the laity in the celebration of the Mass, only that they be actively engaged. Jesus Christ acting through the ministry of the ordained priest is still the principal actor, not the laity, something that present manner in which the new Mass is celebrated is obscured. The idea that Vatican II introduced a new ecclesiology is pure fiction, an invention of post Vatican II "Spirit of the Council."
Your indignation that many were traumatized by the reforms ignores the point that the reforms were instrumental in the subsequent loss of faith and practice of the faith. You can argue all that you want that it should not have led to that but you cannot discount that it did just because it does not match your own private theology.
I know of no one who is arguing that the old Mass should be unilaterally imposed on the whole church. That is a canard and please do not bring up one or two isolated voices that are calling for it. For the most part, we just want the freedom to celebrate as their ancestors have for nearly two thousand years. As for a traditional (the common usage) form of the Mass, the Church authorizes it. It is you who insists that the Mass be celebrated YOUR way. I find your complaint against clericalism ironic since you are a prime example of its exercise.
And you still have not given any reason that the old Mass should be suppressed and not allowed to exist alongside the new.
Anthony - "Roosters crow at dawn due to their internal clock and not the rising sun, researchers have found." "Current Biology", Volume 23, Issue 6, March 18, 2013.) Circadian clock determines the timing of rooster crowing, Tsuyoshi Shimmura ∙ Takashi Yoshimura
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Vatican Two codified what had been developing in ecclesiology for over 100 years including a re-discovery of the role of the laity at mass. The present mass which adds greater emphasis to the role of the laity at mass makes that more evident.
If there was nothing new in the ecclesiology of Vatican Two, why was this address by then Cardinal Ratzinger necessary? "The Ecclesiology of Vatican Two" Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 15 September 2001.
I suggest those "traumatized" are few and that their "feelings" should not rule the day in determining how the Church, or an individua priest for that matter, celebrates the mass. Then "trauma" they express is much the same as your protestations of "suppression" and the general "victimization" mind-set of many traddies. It is an imaginary, self-imposed suffering.
Celebrate as your ancestors did - in Greek. The height of clericalism is when a priest says, "I'm going to celebrate mass as I want whether you, the congregation, like it or want it or not."
This is getting silly but for the sake of completeness:
The research team, from Nagoya University, investigated via a fairly straightforward route: They put several groups of four roosters in a room for weeks at a time, turned the lights off, and let a video camera running. Although roosters can occasionally crow at any time of day, the majority of their crowing was like clockwork, peaking in frequency at time intervals roughly 24 hours apart—the time their bodies knew to be morning based on the sunlight they’d last seen before entering the experiment.
This consistency continued for about 2 weeks, then gradually began to die out. The roosters were left in the room for 4 weeks in total, and during the second half of the experiment, their crowing began occurring less regularly, at any time of day, suggesting that they do need to see the sun on a regular basis for their circadian rhythms to function properly.
The question of the role of the laity is not their participation but who is the principal actor and this has not changed. It is Jesus Christ acting through the agency of the priest, not the laity. Today too much emphasis is placed on the idea that the liturgy is the work of the laity leading to the idea that the Mass is primarily a communal meal of the gathered faithful rather than the presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary.
You are avoiding the point with the question of Catholics who were upset by the changes. It is another data point in whether the changes led to drop off of faith.
As for an individual priest not ruling the day on how the Mass should be celebrated, look in a mirror and stop demanding that it be celebrated the way YOU want. If this is to be determined by the Church then accept that the Church has options for all those forms from the old Mass that you despise.
The height of clericalism is when a priest says that all others are going to celebrate the Mass the way HE wants it, whether others like it or not.
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