When I was a child living in South America, I remember seeing the men standing around outside of church during mass, waiting for their wives, and smoking cigarettes and talking about whatever.
When I became a teenager, I stopped going to mass altogether, just about a year before the Novus Ordo was imposed.
When I came back to the Church I was like about 40, and I went to the Novus Ordo for about 3 months before I discovered a Traditional Latin Mass. In that short time in the Novus Ordo, I noticed that there were few men at mass.The population in the USA is composed of 50/50 men and women, yet the mass is like 80% women at least.
I've asked myself many times why don't men go to mass? My answer is that the majority of priests today are not the type of men that men would look up to, or follow. Why not? Because an abnormally high percentage of priests today are feelings oriented, a trait which corresponds to only about 15% of men, according to Myers-Briggs Personality Test.
A feelings oriented priest does not have a clue how to lead men by his actions and words, he just does not have it in him. They are in short, artists, men concerned with the incense, vestments, music, marble. A feelings oriented priest will try to draw men to mass by doing what would attract himself, and by the very action will repulse men.
I believe that until the clergy is better balanced to include more non-feelings oriented priests, we will continue down the same road.
What do the men on CI think about that? Ladies, I doubt you will understand what I'm talking about here.