When Pope Benedict issued his motu proprio liberalizing the use of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, he hoped that much of the richness of the old Mass would influence how the new Mass was celebrated. I don’t think this is what he had in mind, though 
If you follow Catholic news at all, you probably know that the Vatican has approved a new English translation of the Roman Missal. It will be implemented throughout the States starting Advent 2011. This new translation is not without controversy, however, so I thought I would address five of the most common objections to the new Missal:
1) The new translation is not needed
Many complain, “where is the need for this translation? who is calling for it?” I think the fact that we have seen a tremendous drop in regular Mass attendance over the past forty years should be reason enough. Of course the existing translation is not the only – or even main – reason Mass attendance has plummeted, but it surely doesn’t help. And the new translation is more catechetical: it teaches more deeply the truths of the faith, and we should not underestimate how much impact hearing the same words every week of our lives can have on a person.
2) There will be too much confusion with the new translation
I have heard numerous people complain that the changes will cause much confusion in the pews, as some people respond “and with you” (the current response) and others respond “and with your spirit” (the new – actually old – response). I have to admit – I have a hard time taking this seriously, considering the fact that forty years ago the Mass was radically changed overnight, from Latin to English. If the Church survived that change, I’m sure it will survive this relatively minor one. There are sure to be some hiccups along the road, but I’m willing to bet that by Lent of 2012, just about every parish will no longer have any problems with implementation.
3) The new translation is too literal
Many don’t realize that the translation currently in use at the Mass isn’t exactly a translation; it is more of a paraphrase. When a Mass is promulgated, there is one “official” text: the Latin. Then it is translated into all the languages of the world. When the English translation we use was made forty years ago, the translators actually paraphrased the text in many places, and thus replaced the official words with what they felt was more appropriate. Advocates of such a process believe that this allows the language of the Mass to more fully reflect the culture of each particular people. The problem with this is that we no longer had a truly unified worship across the Latin rite, as our “translation” did not always reflect the same realities as other translations, or as the Latin. By sticking more closely to the Latin, we are more in tune with the mind of the universal Church, not the mind of some group of 1970’s liturgical gurus.
4) This is a “step backwards”
Some (notably Fr. Thomas Reese) have argued that this new translation is actually a “step backwards.” By this they feel that by having a more faithful translation we are moving back to a pre-Vatican II day. Frankly, this is their argument about any change that incorporates more traditional elements of the Church. What they do not understand is that very few Catholics want to go back to the 1950’s, but we do want to incorporate the whole of our tradition. One of the great annoyances I had as a Protestant was that we didn’t appreciate history at all; to us, Church history was the first century, the early 16th century and the last 20 years. But as Catholics we incorporate all of our tradition into our practices, and this new translation is taking us out of the 1970’s time capsule we have been in and better incorporating all of our tradition.
5) The new translation will be too hard to understand
Another argument against the new translation is that it uses words that are too difficult to understand, like “ineffable.” On its face, this is a very demeaning attitude. America is the most educated nation in the history of the world, and some people don’t think we will understand a word like “ineffable?” And even if someone does not, they can just look it up that week and for the rest of their Mass-attending life they will know what it means. Furthermore, “dumbing down” the liturgical language can have many negative side-effects. The Mass is not something we experience once and then never again; we celebrate it every week (even every day). If we use dumbed-down language, we are likely to be easily bored with it (as has in fact happened), and we are going to see the Mass not as something that lifts us up to heaven, but that keeps us here on earth. Language that is more lofty than everyday language can remind us of the solemnity of the mysteries we are celebrating.
Pray for our bishops and pastors that they might be able to properly implement this new Missal and that it might help the faithful to more fully worship our Lord in spirit and truth.
Quick question: have you ever met anyone who likes The New American Bible? Me neither.
The NAB, which is the official translation used during Mass in the United States, first entered this world, like me, in 1970. Also like me, it is starting to show its age. Unlike the King James or the Douay-Rheims, the NAB is unable to escape from its origins and reading it is like opening a time capsule and entering 1970 all over again. Because of this, Cistercian monk Br. Stephen makes a great suggestion: let’s retire the NAB:
The NAB, with its self-consciously contemporary prose of 1970, lacks the necessary timelessness to succeed as religious prose, possessing neither consciously sacral language that takes the reader out of the present moment nor the sort of unobtrusive good writing that allows the word of God to speak across time. With age, the idiom of the NAB has become a period piece, carrying us back two full generations to the blunt ugliness of the aesthetics of socialist realism and other ideas about language and literature that failed to win a lasting cultural berth. Today, its awkward phrasing may remind the reader not so much of the small, still voice of God as of the staccato earnestness of James T. Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise. In attempting to be current, the translators left us with something that was already becoming dated by the time their work was in print.
And lest anyone think that the NAB is somehow the only English version approved for liturgical use, note that in many English-speaking countries the translation used for the liturgy is the Jerusalem Bible (my personal favorite), and the Douay-Rheims is still used for the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, even in this country. So we already have approved English translations to choose from.
Along with Br. Stephen, it is my prayer that the NAB is retired before I am.
I thought this story of a young boy and an Orthodox priest was a perfect embodiment of today’s Gospel:
I am visiting the family back in upstate New York for a little bit and today went off to the 9:30 AM divine liturgy at one of the eight(!) local Orthodox parishes that are within a convenient drive of my father’s house. The liturgy was reasonably well attended for midsummer and was unremarkable until the time came for the last major censing by the deacon. The priest was at the altar with the doors open when suddenly a small boy, not more than four or five years old, broke loose from his parents and ran up towards the altar and… charged right through the doors and started tugging on the priests vestments.
I can now relate that the sudden and simultaneous intake of breath on the part of a couple of hundred people creates a very distinctive sound. But the silence that followed was almost painful. The parents… visibly horrified seemed not sure of whether or not to rush up and add to the chaos in the sanctuary. This was coupled with a deep silence from everyone else frantically trying to avert their eyes from what was at the least surely going to prove a terrible embarrassment if not a major catastrophe.
Then in a few seconds the crisis was ended. The priest looked over his shoulder and after a moment of visible (and understandable) shock, smiled and I thought he was going to laugh. With a quick motion of his hand he called over the deacon who had been in the process of censing and calmly relieved the deacon of his censor. He then bent over and handed the censor to the little boy, showing him how to hold it and swing it, and then directed him to finish censing the iconostasis and assorted icon stands.
Off went the overjoyed little boy, with the deacon hot on his trail, happily censing everything that looked even remotely like an icon. OK OK he almost knocked over a candle stand but the deacon saved the day. After he was done the deacon relieved him of the censor and quietly guided the happiest child in the city back to his parents.
I have no idea how many church canons or liturgical rubrics were violated today. But I can tell you that there was not a dry eye in the church.
There is a rising trend in Evangelical churches these days: pastors preaching to multiple congregations through hi-def technology:
The Sunday morning service at Fellowship Church in Dallas, Texas, was humming along with hymns and prayers when something unusual happened.
The lights in the sanctuary suddenly dimmed, and members of the church hushed as they peered at a pulpit shrouded in darkness. The parishioners then erupted in cheers and whistles as Ed Young Sr., the church’s senior pastor, emerged from the darkness with a microphone in hand.
“Please be seated, be seated,” Young said as he grabbed the Bible. “How are you guys doing today? Doing well?”
Young delivered his sermon, but he couldn’t hear or see his congregation respond: He wasn’t physically there.
Young’s parishioners were instead looking at a high-def video image of their pastor beamed into their sanctuary from a “mother” church in Grapevine, Texas.
Young is part of a new generation of pastors who can be in two places at one time. They are using technology — high-def videos, and even holograms — to beam their Sunday morning sermons to remote “satellite” churches that belong to their congregation.
The problem with this trend isn’t the technology, or even having sermons broadcast to multiple locations (EWTN essentially does this all the time). The real problem of this particular use of the technology is two-fold: (1) it encourages a cult of personality around the pastor, and (2) it diminishes the sacramental nature of Christianity, in which matter and spirit are combined in our path to salvation.
Most Protestant services revolve around the sermon, and the better the preacher, the more likely the service will be popular. Churches begin to revolve around the personality of the pastor, whose preaching ability is essential to the success of the church. But the structure of the Catholic Mass helps to prevent this problem. The focus of the Mass is not the sermon, but instead the Eucharist, in which Jesus Christ is truly present to us in sacramental form. The only cult of personality that should exist in the Church is around the person of Jesus Christ.It is great when a Catholic priest is a good preacher, but that is not the primary reason we come to Mass, and it should not be the high point of the liturgy. Instead, the miracle of the consecration is what should draw us: through the power of the Holy Spirit bread and wine are able to change into the body and blood of our Lord.
Furthermore, we believe the “Word became flesh” thus elevating our physical natures to heights unimagined before the incarnation. This taking on of flesh by the Son of God has profound implications for our lives, and it effects how we live our Catholic Faith. The Church does not allow sacraments to occur without the physical presence of the minister (you can’t receive confession by phone, nor can a priest consecrate the bread and wine if he is not physically present). This isn’t anti-technology, it is good theology, for God uses physical matter to bring us closer to Him. As much as modern technology can help us in our walk with the Lord, nothing can replace one-on-one interaction with our pastors and fellow Christians.
Ultimately, it really isn’t very impressive that these pastors can “appear” at multiple locations at one time; Jesus Christ has been appearing at EVERY Catholic parish in the world since his Ascension! He doesn’t need hi-def technology to do it, but instead through a sacramental miracle he takes the form of bread and wine and allows himself to be received by his followers. No man-made technology will ever to able to top that!
Last week a couple of blogs compiled the 10 worst hymns of all-time and the 10 best hymns of all-time. Not surprisingly, the lists set off a flurry of comments, as everyone has an opinion as to what music should be played during Mass. I have my own favorite (and not-so-favorite) hymns and I admit that my tastes are eclectic. But some of my favorite liturgical music is found in the Eastern Divine Liturgy: the words are theologically rich and the tunes lift one up to God. One thing interesting about Eastern liturgical music is that it doesn’t use instruments; only the human voice is used.
Archpriest David M. Petras has an interesting article on music in the Divine Liturgy over at SperoNews and it is well worth the read:
From the beginning, music has been an aspect of our worship of God. This was true of the Jews and passed into Christianity. Even pagans worshiped in song. St. Paul writes, “Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another (in) psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts” (Eph 5:18-19). St. Paul therefore tells us that singing is a gift of the Holy Spirit.
The same Holy Spirit is “present everywhere and fills all things.” It is through the Spirit that the Divine Liturgy becomes a “sacrifice of praise,” identified with the one true sacrifice of Our Lord, and it is through the same Holy Spirit that we sing hymns Even before Christ, in the Jewish era, Philo identified spiritual sacrifice with hymns, though he is also very cautious about the adequacy of audible sounds to contain the divine reality.
Only the human voice
For the Christians, the hymns had to have words. Liturgical hymns are not just hummed, they are absolutely not only a matter of melody, notes and meter. They are not just beautiful sounds, but they convey a truth and a concept. This is perhaps why the church early on accepted only the human voice in song and forbade musical instruments. Eusebius of Caesaria was to write, “more sweetly pleasing to God than any musical instrument would be the symphony of the people of God, by which, in every church of God, with kindred spirit and single disposition, with one mind and unanimity of faith and piety, we raise melody in unison in our psalmody” (”On Psalm 91, 4″). The Eastern Church accepted this principle as its tradition. The rejection of instruments, however, was not universal, for the Western Church later allowed their use in the church.
Living in the Washington, DC area has many advantages, one of which is the rich cultural diversity found here. Just about every community on earth seems to be represented in some form in this city and its suburbs. This diversity also exists in the various Catholic communities found locally, and this has impacted my own spiritual life. On a regular basis I attend four different types of Mass:
All of these liturgies are faithfully and reverently said and I like aspects of each of them. I admit that I prefer some forms more than others (I’ll keep coy about the specifics), but I acknowledge that such preferences are often a matter of personal tastes and not based on fundamental theological principles. But I’ve found that among those who believe in the importance of the liturgy (as I do), I’m a bit of an anomaly. It seems (at least online) that most people who are passionate about the liturgy are passionate about one particular form of the liturgy and believe all other forms to be inadequate at best and harmful or even heretical at worst. But although I am passionate about the liturgy, I do think multiple forms are possible and can even be complimentary.
Fortunately, I have found a kindred soul – and he is even here locally: Msgr. Charles Pope, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington. Msgr. Pope is the pastor of an African-American church which has a Gospel-style Mass, but he also regularly celebrates the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. From his unique experience he has found many similarities in the two types of Mass, which he explains in this video:
Of course, neither Msgr. Pope or myself are advocating chaos in the liturgy: there must be order and the Church is the one to impose that order. No one can make up their own liturgy and the liturgy must abide by certain standards and structures. But the Church herself allows for some diversity within those standards and I think she is wise to do so.
When I was an Evangelical Christian, we would often engage in “spontaneous” prayer in which each person would simply pray as “the Spirit led them.” We were against rote prayers, feeling that they were “traditions of men” and broke the Lord’s command against vain and repetitious prayer (Matthew 6:7). But over time I started to realize something: our “spontaneous” prayers were awful unoriginal, each sounding like a slightly modified version of the previous prayer.
The same thing occurred with our Sunday worship services: they were intended to be spontaneous and fresh, yet over time they took on a set structure that was much like every other Evangelical service out there.
It appears that other Evangelicals have noticed that today’s Sunday services are still just as predictable as always, as can be seen in this hilarious video:
The problem with condemning repetition in prayer is that it is almost impossible to be truly spontaneous all the time, and it is human nature to feel comfortable with repetition in our lives. Jesus did not condemn repeating prayers, he condemned mindlessly repeating prayers. If you say the Hail Mary without contemplating what you are saying, then you are “babbling like the pagans” (Matthew 6:7). But if you pray the Hail Mary while contemplating the mysteries of our salvation, then your prayer is efficacious. After all, when the apostles asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, he did not say, “just wing it”, but instead gave them a set prayer to say: the Our Father.
For those in the DC area, there will be a Pontifical Solemn Mass (Extraordinary Form) at the Basilica of the National Shrine tomorrow in honor of Pope Benedict’s 5th anniversary. Bishop Slattery of Tulsa will be celebrating. It should be amazing!
More details at www.pontificalmass.org.
Yesterday my wife and kids were out of town, so I decided to attend Divine Liturgy at Holy Transfiguration Melkite Greek-Catholic Church in the morning, and then the Extraordinary Form of the Mass at my parish in the evening (while watching the Reds beat the Cubs 3-1 in-between!). It was a beautiful way to spend a Sunday (although I would have preferred my family to be around) as I was able to first-hand experience the traditions of the Catholic Church in their fullness.
I’ve said this before, but I’m struck by the similarities between the Eastern liturgy and the Western liturgy, especially in the extraordinary form. One of the things that struck me yesterday was the extravagance of both liturgies. In America, we are very extravagant when it comes to sports (just look at the Super Bowl half-time show), politics (watch a Presidential inauguration sometime), and showbiz (see an Oscar red-carpet show). But when it comes to religion, we are very reticent about being too extravagant. Our puritan origins suggest that we keep our religious ceremonies simple. And there is a certain beauty to a simple liturgy; I know that I love attending a daily Mass with no music and a short homily. Simple liturgies can be very spiritually uplifting.
But traditionally Catholic liturgies are anything but simple, especially in the East. Since this is where we directly interact with God as a community, what can be too extravagant for the Almighty Lord? Thus, traditional prayers tend to be long, filled with a lot of theological language and highly poetic. Take, for example, the Confiteor in the Latin Mass. We don’t just confess our sins to God. We confess them to “almighty God, to blessed Mary every Virgin, to blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, to all the saints, and to you, brethren”. Do we need to include all those other people along with God? No, but by including them we forcibly remind ourselves of being surrounded by saints and angels during the liturgy.
The Eastern liturgy is even more extravagant. They cannot say in 5 words what can be said in 100 words, nor do they say once what can be said three times. For example, instead of just having a generic prayer at the beginning of their liturgy for travelers or the country, they pray “For our country, the president, and all those in public service”, “For this parish and city, for every city and country, and for the faithful who live in them”, “For favorable weather, an abundance of the fruits of the earth, and temperate seasons”, and “or travelers by land, sea, and air, for the sick, the suffering, the captives, and for their salvation”.By including every possible situation, they make the prayers real and focus the spirit on truly praying for these intentions.
This extravagance is not due to accretions that have built up over the centuries; there is an important theological point to which they direct us. As the most sublime type of interaction we can have with God while on earth, the liturgy should place us in the presence of God and remind us that He is the Almighty, the Eternal One, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Nothing is too extravagant for Him! All of this extravagance puts us in our proper place in the universe: He is God, we are not.
If we spend millions of dollars celebrating a football game in the middle of the winter, why not spend a few extra words worshiping God?
This past Sunday my family attended Mass in the Extraordinary Form, as my pastor has begun to say this Form of the Mass on a weekly basis at our parish. It was the first time attending a Latin Mass for my wife and most of my children, so I tried to prepare them beforehand as to what to expect. It was a Low Mass, so silence reigned, which was actually quite beautiful.
Although I truly appreciate the old Mass, I admit that I am content with the Novus Ordo, as long as it is properly celebrated. However, there are many Catholics who greatly prefer the Latin Mass, and John Zmirak has posted a wonderfully written, charitably-argued defense of traditional Catholicism over at Inside Catholic. I urge everyone to go over there and read it.
Zmirak distinguishes between “orthodox Catholics” and “traditionalist Catholics”. “Orthodox Catholics” are those who assent to all the Church’s teachings and appreciate all the Church’s traditions, yet do not have an attachment to pre-Vatican II, Tridentine Catholicism. In fact, some orthodox Catholics greatly prefer many of the changes that came about as a result of Vatican II. “Traditionalist Catholics”, on the other hand, also assent to all the Church’s teachings, but believe that many of the pre-Vatican II, Tridentine traditions of the Church still have great value. As someone who falls in the “orthodox Catholic” camp but has significant Traditionalist sympathies, I want to make a few comments on Zmirak’s article:
Still, the division [between orthodox and traditionalist Catholics] is palpable. It was lying right there on the table, for any who cared to palpate it, last week when I went to dinner with a Trad-minded colleague and a visiting author who’d come to speak at our college on G. K. Chesterton. (The presentation was riveting, and I highly recommend Dale Ahlquist’s talks and books.) Like the good Mr. Shea, our speaker is a convert, and he shared with Mark a puzzlement at the apparent fixation traditionalists have on restoring former elements of the liturgy and other Catholic practices that are not essential, and resisting innovations that are not inherently evil. Having come from churches that didn’t have the Eucharist, and remaining through God’s grace flush with gratitude for the sacraments, many converts really don’t understand what the rest of us are nattering on about. We who grew up privileged may seem like sulky, spoiled kids. We owe these good people an explanation.
Zmirak hits on an important difference here. When I go to Mass, I still sometimes find myself saying, “Jesus Christ is coming – body, blood, soul and divinity – to this altar; I can’t believe I’m here!” A traditionalist cradle Catholic, on the other hand, might sometimes think something along the lines of, “Jesus Christ is coming – body, blood, soul and divinity – to this altar; I can’t believe [insert liturgical abuse] is here!” Both are valid reactions, and both appreciate the awesomeness of what is happening. But the former perspective – often held by converts – doesn’t concern itself with many of the inessential elements of the Mass. After all, we have been a part of a ecclesial community which didn’t even have the Eucharist, so we are just thankful for being present.
But should we be concerned with “inessential” elements? Zmirak thinks so:
Here’s what we Trads have realized, that the merely orthodox haven’t: Inessential things have power, which is why we bother with them in the first place. In every revolution, the first thing you change is the flag. Once that has been replaced, in the public mind all bets are off — which is why the Commies and Nazis filled every available space with their Satanic banners. Imagine, for a moment, that a newly elected president replaced the Stars and Stripes with the Confederate battle flag. Or that he replaced our 50 stars with the flag of Mexico. Let’s say he got away with doing this, and wasn’t carried off by the Secret Service to an “undisclosed location.” What would that signify for his administration? If people accepted the change, what else would they be likely to accept?
A valid concern, but I would argue that it can be easily over-inflated. If the president changes the United States flag with the flag of Mexico, that has a powerful effect. But if he changes the dinner china in the White House dinner room, that does not. So there are inessential things that have power, and inessential things that do not. The trick is determining the difference, and the sin of the Pharisees was that they could not make that distinction. But even accepting that certain inessential elements have power (such as the turning of the priest towards the people), the Christian should still always realize that even then they do not trump truly essential elements, something that, at least in my experience, some Traditionalist Catholics have a hard time remembering.
In fact, you can see the danger in focusing on inessential matters in the very comments of Zmirak’s article. In one of the very first comments, another traditionalist criticizes Zmirak for being positive about the congregation saying the responses with the altar servers. Instead of focusing on the fact that Zmirak is giving an extremely powerful argument for his own beliefs, this traditionalist focuses only on another inessential matter to debate.
But this does not diminish the main thrust of Zmirak’s article. I applaud him for this well-argued article, and I hope many of us “orthodox Catholics” give it a read and take his arguments to heart.
Last week I took my teenage daughter to a special Mass which I hoped she would find especially appealing. It included inspiring worship music, elaborate visual stimulation and inspired preaching. And afterward, when I asked her what she thought, she enthusiastically told me that she liked it. Here is a description of this “teen-friendly” Mass from the parish’s website:
A Solemn High Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the Feast of the Purification (Candlemas) with a blessing of the Candles and Procession with polyphonic propers composed by William Byrd, and the Ordinary from his Mass for Four Voices, sung by Chantry.
Now I admit that I am not an “Old Mass-only” Catholic. Nor do I think the Mass needs to be in Latin; I prefer the vernacular, truth be told. However, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that we have spent countless hours and enormous amounts of energy over the past 40 years trying to create a Mass that is “relevant” and engaging to our teens, when perhaps it was collecting mothballs in the closet the whole time?
This is pretty cool: someone has gone through the entire Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and noted all the biblical references in it. A small example:
Choir: Through the prayers of the Theotokos (Mother of God), Savior, save us.
Bible References: Galatians 3:24, Saint Luke 1: 46 – 55, Saint Luke 1:42
Deacon: Again and again in peace let us again pray to the Lord.
Bible References: 1 Thessalonians 5:17
Choir: Kyrie, eleison.
Translation: Lord, have mercy.
Bible References: Psalms 51:1
Deacon: Help us, save us, have mercy upon us, and protect us, O God, by Your grace.
Bible References: Psalms 123:3, Psalms 106:47, Saint Mark 9:22
Choir: Amen.
Deacon: Remembering our most holy, pure, blessed, and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and ever virgin Mary, with all the saints, let us commit ourselves and one another, and our whole life to Christ our God.
Bible References: Saint Luke 1:42
Choir: To You, O Lord.
Bible References: Acts 20:32
Priest: For Thine is the majesty, and Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory: of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages.
Bible References: Revelation 8:12, 1 Chronicles 29:11, Saint Matthew 6:13, Daniel 4:34
Oftentimes Protestant Christians will accuse liturgical Christians such as Catholics or Orthodox of not engaging in “biblical worship”. This page shows that nothing could be further from the truth.
Two announcements related to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass being celebrated in the DC area:
On Saturday, April 24th, Dario Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei”, will celebrate the Extraordinary Form of the Mass at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I imagine it will be breathtaking.
On an even more local note, the pastor of my own parish, St. John Neumann in Gaithersburg, MD, will begin celebrating the Extraordinary Form of the Mass weekly at 5pm on Sundays starting on Feb. 21st (the First Sunday in Lent). He will begin by celebrating the low mass, and he hopes to move to a Missa Cantata (basically a low mass with a choir) by Easter.
If you are in the area, try to make an effort to attend!
A common lament in many churches today is the lack of young people. It seems that many youth today can’t leave faith of their parents fast enough once they are on their own. This is true in Catholic churches and it is especially true in evangelical churches, at least according to this interesting article in the Broken Arrow Ledger entitled “Where have the Young People Gone?” Some excerpts (emphasis added):
“Nationwide polls and denominational reports are showing that the next generation is calling it quits on the traditional church. And it’s not just happening on the nominal fringe; it’s happening at the core of the faith.”
That’s the opening paragraph in a press release promoting a new book, “Already Gone,” by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer, with Todd Hillard…
Two-thirds of young adults who have grown up in evangelical churches are leaving, according to Ham and Beemer.
Nancy Mabry, youth director at St. Stephen’s United Methodist Church, agrees that evangelical churches are losing twenty-somethings, but she credits a reluctance to make any sort of commitment as the underlying cause.
If young people can’t commit to a skating party on Sunday evening until Sunday morning, they’re going to have difficulty making long-term commitments to anything else, Mabry said.
When she was in her 20s, she said “If you didn’t have a fever, you went to church. Some people say they don’t come to church because Sunday is the only day they have to spend with family. Why don’t they spend it with their family in church? Now, church is an option,” Mabry said.
What is the solution? There is a hint of it found later in the article:
There is an exception, however, according to Mabry. Traditional churches that are liturgical churches and smaller evangelical churches seem to be retaining their twenty-something members in greater numbers than larger and mega-churches.
The Rev. John Wilke, senior pastor of Immanuel Lutheran Church, has read the book and said he found it to be a fascinating study.
He cited one of Luther’s writings as something for church leaders to consider: “A faith that costs nothing and demands nothing is worth nothing.”
“I think that is where the church is today. I get too many things in the mail from churches that say, ‘Come just the way you are, you don’t have to change,’” Wilke said.
“While God loves you where you are, he expects you to change. We don’t put the fear of God in our churches, we don’t have that respect. We’ve made Jesus our homeboy. He’s not our homeboy, he’s our Saviour.”
Wilke said the only church he knows of that is experiencing growth in the 20-to-29-year old age group is the Greek Orthodox Church.
“The Greek Orthodox Church is a liturgical church. Kids want to return to something different from what they get from the world. If we want to reach these kids again, we are going to have to return to what the early church was doing. We need to raise the bar,” he said.
Read that last part again: a demanding, liturgical Church is actually attracting youth!
Over the past forty years, the goal of many Catholic parishes has been to make it as easy as possible to be a Catholic so that everyone, but especially the youth, would be willing to come. There has been very little preaching about sin and repentance or about the demands the Faith puts upon you. Furthermore, the underlying assumption for many has been to make the celebration of the Mass more “relevant” to the younger generations, so that they will be more attracted to coming. However, this study shows the exact opposite has occurred: kids have rejected the easy way and instead favor churches that are more demanding and more traditionally liturgical.
Youth want to be inspired; they want to be called to something above themselves. A demanding, liturgical church naturally does this and as a result attracts youth without even explicitly trying.
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I began my study of the Catholic faith in 1991 as an Evangelical Protestant, converting to the Catholic Church in 1993.
I serve as head of evangelization at St. John Neumann parish in Gaithersburg, MD, and am cofounder of Little Flowers Foundation, a non-profit whose mission is to assist Catholic families seeking to adopt children with special-needs.
I regularly speak to parish groups and other organizations on a variety of topics - contact me to schedule a talk for your group.
You can email me at eric@ericsammons.com.
