Among young Catholics at the University of Dallas, Texas, the kind of liturgy that’s accompanied by guitar-strumming and hymns from the 1970s is referred to, somewhat patronisingly, as “the Bob Dylan Mass”. “It’s our joke,” says Claire Seelig, 22, a recent graduate of the university. “Like, ‘Oh, yeah, the boomer hippie music – that’s the Bob Dylan Mass'."
Claire belongs to a growing cohort of young Catholics across America who regularly attend the Traditional Latin Mass, despite now finding access to it restricted. Conservative, intellectually hungry and digitally literate, they’re in the contemporary world but certainly not of it.
While most of Claire’s peers haven’t been won over to the TLM, she senses a common pull towards traditional worship: “I know hardly any young people who prefer the <em>kumbaya</em>-guitar Mass to a more traditional liturgy.”
A recent study showed that, among American men ordained since 2020, 85 per cent identify as theologically conservative, while 68 per cent ordained in the 1960s identify as progressive. As for the Bob Dylan-loving boomers, Claire says that their vision of what the Church of the new millennium needed – a more inclusive, progressive faith – is “not actually what the people of the new millennium, young people, are interested in”.
What are young people interested in? If they’re religious at all – and increasingly they’re not – today’s youth seem to be looking for an alternative set of ideas to those which they feel have led to the moral and social vacuum of modern life. Illinois-based podcast host Connor McHugh, 25, calls this trend the rejection of the “boomer mentality”: “That belief that liberalisation will make a better society.”
Part of why Connor and others have embraced the TLM is that it feels connected to something ancient and more enduring: the culmination of hundreds of years of tradition.
Texas teacher Nick Cavazos, 26, grew up in a non-denominational Christian family and considers himself a bit of a theology nerd. He flirted with Calvinism before delving into Church history. When he attended his first TLM – a requiem – he was hooked: “I finally saw all of the theological textbooks that I had read about Catholicism, and all of my expectations about Catholicism, become manifest before my eyes. It was something truly, truly beautiful to witness.”
Nick sees his journey to the TLM as part of a broader trend among young men. “Modernity already has a very negative outlook on young men,” he says. “As a reaction, they’re looking for something that will call them higher.” Beyond the ethereal atmosphere of the TLM, attendance also signifies another kind of conservatism, “particularly when it comes to sexuality and gender”.
Nick feels that there’s one-sided persecution in the Church where progressivism is, if not embraced, dealt with gently while conservatism is treated by the “old guard” as the greater threat. Ordinary parishioners have had access to the TLM restricted, while those whose teachings Nick says are “proximate to heresy” go without reprimand.
Pope Francis has criticised the Church in the US for having “a very strong, organised, reactionary attitude”. He recently moved against two outspoken critics: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/podcast/the-splendour-of-the-truth-with-bishop-joseph-strickland/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Joseph Strickland was removed from his office</mark></a> as bishop of Tyler, Texas, for “administrative reasons” and Cardinal Raymond Burke was reported to have been stripped of his Vatican-paid flat and stipend for using these traditional privileges “against the papacy” and sowing “disunity”.
The Holy See is not the only office which eyes American traditionalists warily. In January 2023, <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/fbi-spied-on-traditionalist-u-s-catholics-from-coast-to-coast-new-evidence-reveals/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">a memo leaked from the FBI on “rad-trad” Catholics</mark></a>. It was headed “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities”. The cases in the memo are disturbing, and so is the impression it gave many Catholic Americans – that their religious practices were viewed as suspect and potentially contained the seeds of extremism.
At the invitation of House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Arlington Latin Mass Society coordinated a private Mass in a conference room inside the US Capitol building. ALMS board member Matthew Penza, 26, says that its purpose was to dispel the suspicion which traditional Catholics have faced under the current administration’s FBI. “The source of the suspicion seems to me to be purely partisan,” he adds, with traditional Catholic doctrine being coded as right-wing.
Catholicism seems caught in the orbit of American politics. It’s difficult to unravel from allegations that the US Church is heading in a supposedly “ultraconservative” direction, in which its critics are leaning into the nation’s typical rhetoric of extremes – calling Catholics “radical” when they’re simply faithful to doctrine and Church teachings on abortion or same-sex marriage.
Beneath their eagerness to share, there’s a sense of hurt among young Catholics who feel misunderstood by both the Church and their government. “Traditional Catholic Americans are just as American as anyone else,” Matthew says. “We are not violent extremists. We just want to have the Mass of our heritage and serve our God.”
<em>Photo: Procession of the monstrance at the University of Dallas; screenshot from University of Dallas website at <a href="https://udallas.edu/faith-service/index.php"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">udallas.edu</mark></a>.</em>
<em>Margaret Mitchell writes for 'The Spectator</em>'.
<strong><strong>This article appears in the October 2024 edition of the <em>Catholic Herald</em>. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">HERE</mark></a></strong></strong>.
