Growing up in the 50s and 60s in the summer, one had to get to church at least half an hour early to get a seat, 20 minutes to stand inside, any later and you had to stand outside beside the windows to hear Mass. The mission chapel nearest the summer cabins had just enough space for the year round residents to sit in a pew or in a folding chair in the back or on the side aisles. In summer they had a minimum of two priests, sometimes three, to give Communion. The same held for Saturday Confessions, two or three priests with at least one in a Confessional from 7:00 am to 5:00 pm. The chapel would be about two thirds full for some weekday Masses, especially on Mondays when they prayed the Miraculous Medal prayers. In the early 70s, there was a noticeable decline in Sunday attendance, both in summer and other times. Nonetheless, they formed a new parish and built the ugliest church imaginable. It looks like a fallout shelter, being half underground and soil heaped up around the top half above ground. The inside, well, imagine if the Flintstones and Rubbles were Catholic with a 70s color scheme. What would their church look like? Although it was technically our parish, we almost never attended. Instead, we drove 15 miles to the beautiful old church where my parents were married. It still looked and smelled Catholic. Both priests said the novus ordo, but kept an atmosphere of reverence. One priest used to say a hybrid “high” Mass, ad orientum. They had a good choir and a real pipe organ, and Communion was still kneeling, on the tongue, at an altar rail that wasn’t removed because it was marble, too difficult and costly to destroy. In 1974, they wreckovated it and both priests were replaced with “groovy” modern priests who went by their first names and wore civies. I graduated from high school and left home and the church in 1975, just as they went to Communion standing, in the hand. It took three years to totally turn me off to church. I attended Mass when visiting my parents, but at college and away from Mom and Dad, no. I did go once to the university’s student Mass at the Newman Center. It was another “cool” priest in earth shoes and burlap vestments, gum chewing kids strumming three chords on the guitar and playing bongo drums. I never went back. Instead, I embarked on a decades long search for truth, only discovering Catholic Tradition in 2005.
Sad to say, I started seeing a repeat of decline in the SSPX after a scant four years of a packed chapel. I’ve learned, however, not to set myself up in judgment of other trads or even novus ordo-ites. If there were an SSPX chapel near me and the priest was for certain, validly ordained, I’d go to Mass there. As it is, it’ll be a year in March that the faithful got locked out, and only once last summer, that I got to have Confession. I AM though, quite removed from all the scamdemic and mask nonsense. There are definite advantages to living alone with three dogs, off grid, in the middle of nowhere!
Topic: Percentage of Catholics who attend mass, per country: (Read 975 times)