Opinion
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The U.S. Bishops gather for Mass at their Spring meeting in June 2018.Lisa Bourne / LifeSiteNews

(LifeSiteNews) – It is not only political parties who promote slogans and engage in talking points. The Episcopacy ilk in the Catholic Church have their own brand of Ostpolitik and their own way of disseminating their literary devices among the faithful. Amid all of the new doomed to fail “programs,” our modern overseers can’t help themselves from imitating a Big Government approach to most anything ailing the dioceses they run. Most people know that a bureaucracy cannot operate efficiently; nor can it inspire the promotion of virtue.

When it comes to the Traditional Latin Mass, many bishops see it as expendable. They don’t seem to realize it is the one thing that is growing; it is the “subsection” of the “brand” that has a tremendous upside. Every other spiritual indicator has been falling steadily since the introduction of the Novus Ordo Mass on November 26, 1969. Baptisms are falling, Confirmations are falling, marriages are falling. The number of religious fell off of a cliff. All but one leading Novus Ordo religious indicator has significantly fallen.

Some bishops don’t like the fact that I have pointed out that there is only one Novus Ordo-related numeric increase. Let us first examine some preceding information. In 1965, about 75% of American Catholics were going to weekly Sunday Mass. Today, that number is around 10% and has been continually falling since 1970. Meanwhile the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) Catholics go to weekly Sunday Mass at a steady 98% rate.

Why does the Church need more bishops to oversee fewer priests? The modern episcopacy seems to float many ideas that are contradictory at best and deceptive at worst.

In 1970, there were around 3,000 bishops in the world. Today there are 5,400. In 1970, there were 59,000 priests in the U.S. In 2023 we are around 30,000 – a precipitous fall in numbers to be sure. The worldwide number of priests has gone from 419,000 to around 410,000 in that same time frame. There is a net loss of 9,000. The worldwide number of baptized Catholics in 1970 was 653 million. Today we are 1.4 billion.  So the Catholic Church has an almost doubling of bishops with less than half the number of priests. The Church has become more top-heavy, to be sure. That is typically what happens in bureaucracies!

A simpler way to view this is by ratios. In 1970, the priests to the faithful were 1 to 1,558. In 2022, the priests to the faithful were 1 to 3,414.  During the same time period, the ratio of bishops to priests went from 1 to 140 in 1970 to 1 to 75 in 2022. As you can see, the ratios are going in opposite directions. A prelate actually told me the reason for this is that we need more bishops in Africa and Asia. What? Why does the Church need more bishops to oversee fewer priests? The modern episcopacy seems to float many ideas that are contradictory at best and deceptive at worst.

Ad nauseam, Catholics devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass have heard bishops say they want to be “obedient” to the Holy Father when it comes to the restrictions on the TLM. Why was that term “obedience” not used when Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum? Besides, St. Paul clearly was not the superior of St. Peter when he “opposed him to his face” (Galatians 2:11) on the question of eating with the uncircumcised. St. Paul never claimed that he had to be “obedient” to Cephas. Especially not when he was wrong. The Mass of the Ages is not a toy to be discarded or restricted at the whim of any given papacy, nor any given chancery. One very good maxim is that obedience serves the faith; obedience doesn’t serve obedience. It would be a shame if the “obedience” being shown by any given bishop to Pope Francis, on this issue, was harboring a hope (quid pro quo) of being promoted to a more prominent See.

Then too, we have all heard the repeated talking point after yet another Latin Mass venue has been cancelled: “there is nothing that can be done.” This statement has been used several times by many different U.S. bishops and it is patently not true. A local bishop is not a vicar of Rome. He is autonomous and very powerful within his diocesan boundaries. The Pope is not a dictator. He does not possess unbridled power among his fellow bishops. He is the First Bishop among equals.

“There is nothing that can be done” is not a true statement. Any bishop can and must do what is best spiritually for his diocese. Otherwise, he commits the error of abandoning his charge to guard and nurture the faith of his flock. A hireling runs when the wolves are near. A true shepherd protects his flock.

We face unprecedented challenges in the modern epoch. In the past 30 years, our nation has gone from 90% professing Christianity to now only about 67%. In 1970, only five percent were religiously unaffiliated. Today it is 29%! In talking about our own Catholicism, a seven-year-old Novus Ordo-attending child today has about a five percent chance of practicing Catholicism when he leaves home in 11 years as an 18-year-old. If that same seven-year-old attends a Traditional Latin Mass, his chances jump to 97%.

I could go on and on about the statistical variances (TLM vs. Novus Ordo) I have come across over the past five years studying the demographics. The numbers are on the opposite poles.

The bishops and chancery officials largely are not interested. They have an answer a priori. Their position seems to be anything but Latin. Their mode of operation gravitates to filling any void with a new and improved program destined for the same dust bin every one of their innovations has previously found. It is a self-fulfilling failure that smacks of spiritual suicide. Only demons (plus their witting or unwitting allies) tread in a realm that sees a downward spiral and yet persecutes an abandoned avenue that was tried as well as proven to our forefathers.

A seven-year-old Novus Ordo-attending child today has about a five percent chance of practicing Catholicism when he leaves home in 11 years as an 18-year-old. If that same seven-year-old attends a Traditional Latin Mass, his chances jump to 97%.

Again and again, I ask myself: what would motivate so much resistance to the Vetus Ordo and its legacy of fruitfulness? The answer comes via an encounter I had many years ago. At the time, I was a seminarian for the Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas and I was assigned at the Corpus Christi Cathedral downtown waiting to go to first theology in the fall of 1991 as a 25-year-old. A young man came by one day asking me a plethora of questions. He was a few years my junior and he had visited many Protestant churches over the previous days. He told me all of the Protestant Churches had one thing in common, they criticized the Catholic Church. Logically then, he said he wanted to convert to the Catholic Church. It was a brilliant deduction about which I had never pondered.

You see, the earthly powers and the demonic are related. The demons hate the Church, but they especially hate and fear Latin.  There is no random punitive attack on the Traditional Latin Mass. It is a coordinated attack because all of Hell knows that the only way forward for the growth of Catholicism can solely be achieved through the Once and Future Mass of the Apostles. It has been written before and I will type it again: If anyone stands in the way of the Traditional Latin Mass in any way, he will find himself fighting against God. There is too much emotion and ego involved on the side that would limit and/or eliminate the greatest conduit to holiness the Church has always possessed. The Traditional Latin Mass evangelized the world and it will do it again. I have come to know throughout my lifetime and eternally before it, that the Most Holy Trinity has a track record of removing obstacles to holiness.

As my mother always said about the truth unfolding, “hide and watch.”

Father Donald Kloster is a priest of the Diocese of Bridgeport, CT. He will complete 28 years as a priest on July 1, 2023. He has said the TLM for 25 years now. He received an MDiv from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, PA. He also wrote his MA thesis on the medicinal affects of the death penalty.

Fr. Kloster was a VA contract chaplain for 8 years and he was a Pastor in the Archdiocese of Guayaquil Ecuador for a large poorer parish  7 years. He also spent two years as a student and postulant at the Benedictine Abbey of Disentis Switzerland.

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