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...and they have not led to an increase in attendance."

Quite the contrary. When I was attending the church (liberal) down the block, There would be 5-6 pews between you and the next person. Now that I attend the Latin mass on the other side of town, its shoulder to shoulder. Stunning when you consider that the church is in a bad neighborhood and most people need to drive quite a distance to attend mass.

Quite the contrary. When I was attending the church (liberal) down the block, There would be 5-6 pews between you and the next person. Now that I attend the Latin mass on the other side of town, its shoulder to shoulder. Stunning when you consider that the church is in a bad neighborhood and most people need to drive quite a distance to attend mass.

Thatonly says that people are switching churches, it doesn't mean that new or lapsed Catholics are coming back now that there is Latin Mass.

Yes, but there are many fewer Traditional Masses so they will have more people from all over the diocese.

In our diocese only one parish is allowed to have the Tridentine Mass - and only one per weekend. Of course that mass is packed because everyone in our diocese who wants to attend has to go there.

Dear Mulch,

"'...and they have not led to an increase in attendance.'

"Quite the contrary. When I was attending the church (liberal) down the block, There would be 5-6 pews between you and the next person. Now that I attend the Latin mass on the other side of town, its shoulder to shoulder."

Yes, but you're likely just drawing like-minded individuals from a number of geographical parish territories and getting them all in one place. In my own archdiocese, there are three Indult Masses each Sunday, one at 7:30 in the northern part of the archdiocese, one at 9 am in the middle of the city, and one at 11:00 in the southern counties of the archdiocese. Between the three Masses, pretty much everone in the entire archdiocese is within a 30 minute drive of an old rite Mass.

Only the 9 am (at a historical church that is very popular with vacationing "traditionalists") in the city is bursting at the seams. The others are reasonably-well attended, but nothing to shake a stick at.

Thus, every Sunday, with around 200,000 Catholics going to Mass in our archdiocese, there are perhaps as many as 1,000 or 1,500 going to an old rite Latin Mass.

It is difficult to reason that these three Masses have increased overall archdiocesan Mass attendance by any significant amount. I suspect most of these folks would just attend a Pauline rite Mass if they had no Indult Mass to attend. But even if every single one of them would not attend Mass without an Indult to go to, that's somewhere in the range of 0.5% - 0.75% of overall Mass attendance in the archdiocese.

sitetest

>>Quite the contrary. When I was attending the church (liberal) down the block, There would be 5-6 pews between you and the next person. Now that I attend the Latin mass on the other side of town, its shoulder to shoulder.

You don't understand what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that traditionalists flock to these parishes from all over -- but the locals are still asleep in the pews. Attendance may have increased at "traditional" parishes -- but that only means there is a decrease at the traveling attendee's own home parishes.

TLM *have not* raised attendance at Mass.

>>Stunning when you consider that the church is in a bad neighborhood and most people need to drive quite a distance to attend mass.

Not stunning at all. See above