Faith in Numbers: Debating the Future of Catholic Parishes

Is the Catholic Church facing a demographic apocalypse or a traditional revival? This riveting conversation dives deep into the statistical realities reshaping Catholic parishes across America as the boomer generation begins to pass away.

Two passionate young Catholics debate whether data suggests an impending collapse of Novus Ordo parishes or if reports of Catholicism's demise are greatly exaggerated. Ryan presents compelling statistics: parishes losing approximately 13 weekly Mass attendees annually to death, retention rates plummeting to 32% for those raised in the post-Vatican II liturgy, and traditional Latin Mass communities growing with 75% retention and fertility rates of 3.4 children per woman. Meanwhile, Hoosier argues for cautious optimism, pointing to stabilization in certain metrics and questioning whether liturgical form alone determines parish vitality.

Beyond the numbers, this discussion explores the profound connection between liturgical practice and faith transmission. When ritual - the foundation of religious identity - undergoes dramatic change, what happens to cultural memory and intergenerational faith? Both debaters, though sometimes disagreeing on trajectory, share a deep love for the Church and concern for its future.

The conversation weaves through fascinating territory: the experiential catechesis provided by reverent worship, the impact of Vatican II reforms beyond just the Mass, the surprising growth of traditional practices among younger Catholics, and what might constitute an authentic Catholic revival in modern America. Whether you're interested in Catholic demographics, liturgical debates, or the broader question of how religious identity survives in secular times, this episode offers thoughtful perspectives from faithful Catholics trying to understand where their Church is headed.

Transcript

Episode Introduction

Speaker 1 0:07

SANTE, sante AMARE MORTI NECRADAS NOS IN TE SPELAVERUMT.

Speaker 2 0:30

All right. So I wasn't even sure exactly what we were debating tonight, because I thought we were arguing about the demographic winter or a demographic springtime. But in the green room we're bringing up some other topics, so I had no idea where this show was going to go tonight.

Speaker 3 0:47

I just got to meet our and we still don't.

Speaker 2 0:48

Yeah, I don't know, I hear my own show pop up. That's weird. So we're going to have a conversation. It's not going to be like a formal debate where each guy gets a set amount of time or anything. We'll kind of just let it be a free-flowing conversation. I think we're going to end up getting into what is some of the causes of the declines that we're seeing and maybe what are some of the hopes. But as we start off, everybody hit like and subscribe. If you guys enjoy the show, share it. You know, do the normal stuff, but let's meet our guests. Hoosier, who are you? What's your story?

Speaker 4 1:22

I'm just a passionate guy. I've just been awakened to the truth in christ and the fullness of that, and so I've been obviously like getting involved with people like you and I just got to say like there is a lot to not be optimistic about. I'm not blind to that fact, but the very fact that there's people taking time out of their weeknight to watch this in this country, in this church, who are have my zeal for the gospel and have my zeal for the church and listen to people like you and all that, like I just can't help but be a little optimistic.

Speaker 2 1:54

Call me crazy, um well, hold on, I'll get to you, hang on.

Speaker 1 1:59

Uh.

Speaker 2 2:00

I love seeing the excitement. I love seeing the excitement. I love it. This is awesome. Are you a convert? Are you a revert? Have you always had your faith? What's the deal? Convert, convert, where'd you come?

Speaker 4 2:10

from.

Speaker 2 2:11

Reformed, reformed. When did you convert? In the process, in the process, so you haven't even fully converted to the church, yet Okay, good to know. All right, ryan, who are you? What's your story?

Speaker 1 2:23

Name's Ryan, tlm, I guess formally and on on Twitter, formally and on. I guess I'll be TLM, semi and on. Now I'm in Nashville, tennessee, so pretty good, pretty good. Diocese, also a convert, came in in 2020. Just, you know, made a Twitter account to see what was up and boy it's fiery.

Speaker 3 2:53

And then I started tweeting things and you found Anthony and decided to get off Twitter. Yeah, how'd you come across?

Speaker 1 2:59

our show. It was the YouTube algorithm pushed it to me and I watched it, you know, with trepidation at first, cause it was like well, like I mean they're kind of small, let's see. And then I I mean I was just laughing, like there was one episode where you guys it's almost like you didn't even realize you were on air and you're just like like Rob where's just laughing? I'm like these guys are just straight up doing it live. There's nothing like this out here. So that's great.

Speaker 1 3:28

so I just kept watching, you know I watch you guys, anthony stein, and that's about it all right.

Speaker 2 3:33

So when you came in, did you go right to the latin mass or did you go, uh, novus ordo, and then come over? What was your story?

Speaker 1 3:41

so this is what's weird. I'd only ever been to one Catholic Mass when I was like 13. Didn't know anything about it, wasn't blown away. I don't know how I knew this, but I was with my grandma. I said, grandma, don't they do it in Latin, or something, because I was kind of underwhelmed. She's like, oh no, they don't do that anymore. And I was like just my 13-year-old brain, year old brain, thought well, that's a mistake. Yeah, never went, never went back and toes in my 20s. But I knew there was such a thing so I googled it.

Speaker 1 4:10

Once I moved down here I said are there any? Like I know it's protestant country. It was like, are there any latin masses in nashville? Oh, two blocks from you, wow. So I walked in and I didn't. I don't remember the novus ordo that I went to when I was like a teenager. I don't remember anything about it. So really I'm like a guy who was is from the 50s and like time traveled because I only ever got really the latin mass. I didn't go to a novus ordo for like two years after my maybe a year, year and a half after my conversion, and I went. I was like I understand, I understand.

Speaker 2 4:48

Yeah, you should have had to do like six months of Novus Ordo as boot camp, but okay, we'll take it All right. So let's lay out kind of just like a framework of where we want this conversation to go, because originally I thought you guys were going to be arguing whether we have a demographic winter upon us or demographic springtime, and I understand the new convert zeal that Hoosier has. Ryan, you seem to have more of like Rob's temperament, where you're just like doom and gloom and like everything's terrible.

Speaker 1 5:24

Well, it's terrible. It's funny. I actually white. If you follow my Twitter a lot, I'm way more optimistic. Um, and you could. You could take the. The tweet that set off this entire like I'll debate you, bro Argument was, um, one of them. It was one of my only black pills, but at the end I mean I'm, I'm optimistic. It's just I'm optimistic for traditionalism, okay, but yes, in this, if Hoosier wants to say, okay, I think it's bad, but not as bad as Ryan says, I'll show you it's even worse. So I will be doom and gloom for today. That'll be my statement. Okay, all right.

Speaker 2 6:03

So, hoosier, what were some of the things you took issue with in his tweet? Let's, let's start with that. Let's say that's a. That's a good place to start. What? What is it in his tweet that you took issue with and you were like wait a minute.

Speaker 3 6:12

I'd like to challenge some of this I really want him to explain the tweet first can I, can, I can I pull up the tweet real quick?

Speaker 4 6:17

yeah, yeah, let's do that. I'll just look it up so I can, and I'll read it off right, and this is. This is where I'm like okay, what case is being made here? Is it the one?

Speaker 1 6:26

that Al Carbo responded to yeah, something like that.

Speaker 4 6:30

So we start off. I've done the math and it is shocking. Yeah, all right, uh, and do you want me to systemically debunk this? Or do you want me to read this? No, no, read it, uh read it first okay, okay, now I'll go point by point.

Speaker 4 6:46

Nova sordo parishes will close in mass, with millions of boomers now dying each year. I estimate 13 parishioners will pass away a year. That's 13 who tithe. I have the amount who tend to attend mass. Let's say that a couple, so seven households each year cease to give on average. Multiply that by five years and what parish can sustain itself when it loses 35 tithing households? Very few are just for the first five years. Deaths will exponentially increase by year 10. And this doesn't take into account the rate of young people leaving the faith 13% retention rate at the new mass. So the boomers won't be replaced and they won't be the only ones who cease to tithe as other parishioners leave for Protestantism, atheism, which is nothing in particular. Add in progressive leading parishes who fly the rainbow flag, even worse retention and you've now got a complete implosion on the very near horizon. Number three closures will be uneven.

Speaker 4 7:54

The USA is undergoing a second reverse great migration, with many moving to the Sunbelt States. Diocese but I'm assuming you meant dioceses in the South south will likely not see parish closure collapse at the same rate as the diocese. And then okay, plural, yeah, there we go, my bad diocese northern, traditionally catholic states, but they will still close, just slower. Migration doesn't solve the problems, uh, population problem, it's a leaky band-aid that just buys some time. And then said traditional parishes will continue to grow and become cramped due to traditionis custodis. Uh, numbers with tc and place factor and the pc repealed factor, uh, both show growth. It's just a matter of speed. Keep in mind, traditional parishes have a 3.4 child to um per woman. I'm assuming you meant total fertility rate and a 75% retention rate. What's stopping them now is building access to TC, which forces hundreds of families into limited spaces. The projection below I double-checked all the AI math. That's outstanding. Note that this does not include the SSPX, which will continue to grow parallel to these diocesan and adult TLMs.

Speaker 4 9:04

Traditional Catholics will gain influence with each passing year. With the growth of TLM parishes and the subsequent implosion of the Novus Ordo parishes, the TLM attending Catholics will have an increasing weight to throw around. Currently, tlm attending Catholics make up 11% of weekly masses attending Catholics. That's likely to double in five to 10 years and double again in 15 to 20 years. Rome's dire financial situation does not lend itself to a long, drawn out war of attrition with traditionalists First. The war of attrition doesn't favor the modernists, as seen above. And second, rome is already at record deficits. Sooner or later they'll have to request money from traditionalists. Pope Leo already has. Anthony Stein reported on this yesterday. So traditionalists will have both increasing numbers and increasing financial weight as time passes on, literally with each passing year.

Speaker 4 9:52

Rome could ideologically plug its ears and stomp its feet, but that's unlikely. Money talks, even with TC still in place. It will not stop the money hemorrhaging out of these parishes. Tc needs to be repealed, not only so the above will happen regardless, but so that the church can gracefully transition to this smaller state and mitigate some of the losses. Novasorta Parish still inhabits some beautiful buildings and they're at risk of closures. If this happens quickly, quicker than TLM, communities can grow to inherit these parishes. If TC keeps the growth slowed, we could lose many historical churches of Protestants, muslims or even secular projects. The reaction from the hierarchy will be most fascinating to watch the situation on the ground. We'll present them with more choices to make, but as more and more priestly and traditional, eventually the dam will break to buckle up and thread. And sorry that I mispronounced a lot of stuff. I'm like blind right now.

Setting the Framework for Debate

Speaker 2 10:39

I'm trying my best, brian did my best, ryan, did you submit that as an article to Crisis? You probably could have got that in as an article.

Speaker 1 10:48

Somebody reached out and sent it to like three different articles, so I was actually reading along on mine, which was the article form, so I just changed a few words. It's been somewhere.

Speaker 2 10:59

Alright. So, hoosier, why don't you tackle a point or two and we'll see if Ryan wants to respond to that point? That's a very long tweet. No, absolutely, tackle a point. Let's see what Ryan has to respond. Let's see how this goes a little bit.

Speaker 4 11:12

Yeah, and again, I appreciate your zeal for the church and what it's going to look like in the future. That's important, obviously. Give me your best bud. My number one would actually be I think you might have sold yourself short on 3.4 child children per woman in traditional parishes. But what you have to remember is at large and this wouldn't be a number of enough significance to be impacted based on how many catholics are tlm and have families already, and that catholics have a total fertility rate in america of 2.2 to 2.3 children per woman per gallup. So you still have replacement levels of fertility. And not only that.

Speaker 4 11:49

I will take as gospel your death rates. I could probably dig a little bit more into them. I have data that could dig more into them, but let's just say okay, 13 parishioners a year are dying. What you're missing here is the church via the um, uh, via Kara of Georgetown, actually reported. So the applied via the um, via cara of georgetown, actually reported. So the applied app. Um research of the apostolate reported 480 905 baptisms in 2024 and if you divide that by the number of parishes in the united states, you actually get 28 baptisms annually for the average parish more than enough to mitigate any losses you would get in death, Is it?

Speaker 1 12:28

408?

Speaker 4 12:29

480,905 baptisms.

Speaker 1 12:38

Might be larger than that. Do you know how many baby boomers die each year? Catholic, catholic.

Speaker 4 12:45

I mean we're probably losing about. Do you know how many baby boomers die each year? Yeah, Catholic, Catholic. I mean we're probably losing about. The death rate amongst boomers is like 15 per 100,000. So we're probably or not for 100,000, 15 per 10,000. So we're probably losing like 5 to 80 a year per parish.

Speaker 1 12:57

So in the United States today, we lose 2.6 million boomers each year. Now, they're not all Catholic, but 30% of them probably are right, 22% exactly. Oh, okay, so you do that math, that's 600,000 and 616,000 each year. Just boomers, just boomers. Now that's identification. So you, you do have to be a little more um cautious with that, because people can just say, well, I'm Catholic on a survey. So what I actually did was I reduced that and I used the weekly mass attending number. So 38% attend weekly mass. And why do I use weekly mass attendance? Because if you go to mass weekly, you're probably most likely to tithe, and that's what keeps the lights on, you know. So, as you saw on the tweet, I'm just talking parish closures.

Speaker 4 13:54

Right. According to the center for um for applied research on the apostolate, you only have like 11 to 13% of Catholics actually giving any substantial portion of their anything, as them building a tie of.

Speaker 2 14:04

Right, and most I would argue most of those are boomers too. Oh yeah, I wouldn't deny that.

Speaker 1 14:14

So. So I actually didn't even take that into account because I wanted to be so generous to the positive side, if you will, or that it's not so doom and gloom side I get. I chop off a lot of when I do my calculations, which we'll talk about. I chop off a lot of when I do my calculations, which we'll talk about. I chop off a lot of reduction data just to, because I just basically over the last month wanted to see where it came out. I said, don't get too technical with it, let's just see, based on, like, deaths, baptisms, what it's looking like. And it was so horrific that I was like well, I don't even have to factor in. I'm basically saying, okay, if you go to Mass weekly, you probably tithe, which we know is not true.

Speaker 1 14:48

But for the sake of argument and to give a little benefit of the doubt, I just included those numbers. So when I divide the 616,000 who die each year by 0.38, 38%, 38, 38, um, that's when I got um, 14 boomers who attend mass weekly will die each year. I then divided that by two, just to assume they're like a household rather than 14 households, because you know. And so then you do seven times five, because we're talking about a five-year time span, and that's why I got to the number of 35 maybe tithing parishioners dying each year. It gets worse, though, because that's the current rate of boomer deaths by the year 2037, four million boomers will be dying each year, compared to 2.6 million boomers, so you're almost doubling why would the number?

Speaker 1 15:43

wait, hang on, because they get older, because they're they're I mean like you're old, okay, yeah, yeah, so it's gonna pick up pace, yeah, okay, um, so right now it looks scary and it's only gonna get worse. Now your your stat on the baptisms coming in. It's then then we to go to retention rate, and that's the other thing.

Speaker 4 16:08

Yes, and I have the retention rates.

Speaker 3 16:09

Okay, we could go there, if you want, or we could keep talking boomers.

Speaker 2 16:17

This is so funny for me. Listen, you autistic freaking Gen Zers.

Speaker 1 16:23

Just go over numbers.

Speaker 3 16:25

I love how Anthony thinks anyone that does math is autistic.

Speaker 1 16:28

I just I've done math since 2010.

Speaker 4 16:33

No, it doesn't work for me yeah, okay, so then it doesn't exceed the math's not there for you. It doesn't exceed the number, even if we're assuming 23%. He didn't give me a number that stipulates that it's 13 per the number of, even if we're assuming 23, like you. Didn't give me a number that stipulates that it's 13 per parish. And even if that were the case, like nothing of what you just said actually brings it to 13 per parish, like I. I followed you and then I lost you because you didn't actually play that out. But not only that, not only that, not only that. Right, the silent generation tithed even more. The church weathered the decline of the silent generation.

Speaker 1 17:10

We lost a thousand parishes in the last decade.

Speaker 3 17:12

Okay, yeah but, so many parishes have closed recently. Man.

Speaker 4 17:16

Yes, but can we talk about why they've closed? Yeah, okay, of parishes closing, it is largely due to parishes that were not able to hold on to demographic change and people move and they are the more suburbanized and there's a priest shortage I won't deny that. So that makes them have to go to larger parishes. That makes parishes have to consolidate. It's not a factor of just sheer declining attendance across the board but the net, the net.

Speaker 1 17:42

So you're talking like okay, so down in the South maybe like 500 parishes that were built, but up in the North you lose 1500. So that nets out at a thousand.

Speaker 4 17:55

I mean, the number of parishes in 2014 was 17,435. Now it's probably somewhere in 16,500 range, maybe even a little bit lower. So it took us a decade to lose 1,000 parishes, right? But of those parishes that were closing right, most of those were holding on by a thread.

Speaker 2 18:14

So Hoosier, are you arguing that it's not going to be as rapid as Ryan is?

Speaker 4 18:20

saying I'm not, saying it's not happening, because that would just be not. I mean, look the proof's in the pudding. But it's not going to be that rapid.

Speaker 1 18:29

So I have from 2014 to 20, so from 1990 to 2014, you had a 12% decline rate. This is all Pew Research data. You had a 12% decline rate in total perishes from 19,620 down to 17,483. But from 2014 to 2019, you went from 17,483 to 16,346. I also saw a number 16,446, so whatever. So you go from an average over that time span of 6.22 percent loss. But if you just go in the last five years now it's doubled to 12.5 percent loss at a decade rate.

Speaker 1 19:10

So it is increasing um I think you are right, I think, the silent generation, because I have the mass retention and weekly mass attendance numbers for silence and they were better than the boomers, of course. So I do think that I basically think your silence, the silent deaths which were almost at the end of um, kind of probably accounted for that um, but the problem is you also don't have regeneration and that's where it's actually going to get even scarier. Like I, I actually think if you just put an immortality charm on the boomers and they never died, you would still see parish closures because the retention rates, like, think about it like the sports team, you have to have good defense, good offense, or if you have a bad defense, you have to have an offense that can score more, or vice versa.

The Demographics of Parish Decline

Speaker 4 20:00

So 2019 was particularly brutal. But what happened now? Let's think critically here. Right, what happened to really bolster that artificially? Because we also know that it's stabilized before and again. Considering consolidated parishes as closed parishes is a little bit uncharitable for being realistic on what's going on there. But I will say even if those numbers are scary, let's get into them. You did concede to me and I will take this and I'll say it's true. The silent generation is the main driver of the first decade, major decade of loss. We've seen what's happening now. What happened in 2018? Certain scandals broke that made a lot of very uneasy on the fence, lackadaisical Catholics a lot more wary about going to mass. That is a real concern. That is a legitimate thing that happened.

Speaker 1 20:42

Hang on, hang on, hang on.

Speaker 4 20:44

Pre-shortages also hit an all time. They started hitting the, we were sort of a halcyon of priestly numbers and declines, but now you still have all these lawsuits. So then, parishes and dioceses are inundated with amounts of money that they have to spend their blood for cash. Yes, of course, the mid 20 to late 2010s is when we really saw this happen.

Speaker 2 21:08

Well, what about? What about? Covid factored in right, so they told everybody stay home.

Speaker 4 21:12

But you just think, when you have all these lawsuits, the diocese have to pay out because one priest in the diocese happened to do something that he should not have done. That's going to cost them a lot of money and if there's a parish on the fence, like we've talked about, they have narrow operational rates. Yes, that is going to realistically close parishes at a faster rate. They have stabilized since then. There's tremendous evidence from the ci ra to suggest that rates of parish closures have stabilized to a rate that's sustainable and that actually outpaces other christian denominations so I'll address that in a little bit, but all I will.

Speaker 1 21:43

All I will say is because I'm going to go back to my offense defense here for a second, um, but first what I would say is like, if we want to blame parish closures for priest shortages, the sspx has shown that that's not the case. They have priestly shortages, but they continue to grow they have 187 seminarians in the United States.

Speaker 3 22:03

Yeah, but they have requests for like 150 more parishes.

Speaker 1 22:08

Yeah, so all right. So, basically, like I can concede on multiple points instead of dragging this into a month fight because I'm about to show why it's not stabilized just based on what I call offense and defense, defense being retention rate, offense being fertility rate.

Speaker 4 22:28

I'd love to talk about retention rates, please.

Speaker 1 22:31

So I mean, it's just a simple sports analogy, like you can have a bad retention rate but then you have to have parents who are having a ton of babies that's kind of what we see in Africa, or you know. You have to have a really good retention rate and then you don't have to have so many children. So let me pull this up. So on the defense side we're talking retention rate and I want to be generous here, because when we talk about retention rate, that gets tricky. It's easier to track.

Speaker 1 22:59

On the TLM side, it's very difficult to track on the Novus Ordo side, because the Novus Ordo is the mainstream. So when you go out and you do polling data, a lot of people will just say yes, I'm Catholic, yeah, right. So I found a way to actually get the retention rate and I'm going to share this math offline because I again like I'm not a mathematician, um, so I will share it offline if people want to correct it. But I calculated the retention rate of Novus Ordo Catholics who grew up attending weekly Because I think that's only fair. If your parents didn't take it very seriously, you're likely not to retain the faith.

Speaker 4 23:38

Real quick, real quick. I'd point out another common statistical error here that we're getting with selecting bias. In that I mean number one. Setting your own parameters is always hard to do statistically right, because you can obviously like I mean one tiny little sort of kink in the numbers and you can just end up with a number that's totally wrong.

Speaker 1 23:54

It's not going to matter. It's so bad, it's literally not going to matter. I'm going to show how, even if you would, but also not only that.

Speaker 4 24:00

I think a big, a big thing that we're dealing with here right A big thing is that people who claim that they grew up attending Mass weekly again that could also and the thing is, you said 13% retention That- was incorrect.

Speaker 4 24:19

I'm going to up in the church and would have been of the generation so this is in that age demographic of I believe it's 35 to 60 who would have not grown up in the church of. Um, you know, pre Vatican, pre Vatican, two 67% retention rate and it hasn't gotten lower per that same pew 2024 survey that I was assuming you're talking about of of identification. Yeah, I don't know what would that track again, like you said, it is admittedly incredibly hard to track it whether that results.

Speaker 1 24:48

You're roughly there. I had a high end of 62%, but that to me, this doesn't really matter because I'm going to show. I'm going to show right now why it doesn't matter, because there's basically not enough offense to cover for the defense. Okay, so the highest amount of self identified retaining Catholics meaning I identified as a Catholic as a child. You surveyed me when I'm an adult and I still would identify as Catholic. So we're not talking weekly mass attendees, not the people who can keep the lights on at the parish. The highest is with Hispanic Americans at 68%. Second highest is white Catholics at 62%. Okay, okay, highest is white Catholics at 62%, okay, okay. So if you want to break that down into how many, then continue to go weekly, okay. Here was the return. So I'm raised weekly. I now continue to go weekly. In 2005, that number was 60%, then it was 52% by 2015, 32.53% by 2019, 22%. It dipped a lot because of COVID 22.67% and then it rebounded to 32%. So right now we're at a low of 32%.

Speaker 4 25:55

Wait, can I? Okay, hang on, hold on. What are you referencing at this point in time?

Speaker 1 25:58

I'm referencing the percent of Catholics who retain weekly mass attendance rates, because those are the people who are going to donate and keep the parish going.

Speaker 4 26:08

Catholics had 75% church attendance rates back then. That's not a fair comparison.

Speaker 1 26:12

That's apples and oranges to today.

Speaker 4 26:14

Yeah, my entire thesis here is that the church is in a really bad state, since the council yeah, but you're trying to draw numbers from a point in time at which the church had said yeah, of course that's going to be the case, of course you're going to have low attendance and it's only going to get lower as people die. That has nothing to do with what the current studying the course of the church has. It's not going to study.

Speaker 1 26:30

And here's why, and I'm going to make the point right now. So I mean, in comparison, the TLM has 75% retention rate. I used SSPX data because they not convert influence and Kara report was 99% weekly mass attendance. Stick a pin in that. Let's look at the offense. Okay, yeah, and I'll show. I'll give you whatever rate you want of retention, sure, okay. So this is how you, if anyone out there wants to figure out if their parish is going to be able to sustain itself, this is the math equation that you do. You do 2.1 divided by your retention rate. 2.1 is the replacement rate that's universally accepted. That shows you. That spits out the number of children that a woman needs on average to just keep the parish stable. And I didn't even consider the factor especially barren sites, that for every convert, eight leave. So I'm not taking this into account. So I'm being very generous.

Speaker 2 27:32

I got a question. Yeah sure, hoosier, why are you like I'm trying to understand, especially because you're so new to this like, why are you so passionate about this?

Speaker 4 27:45

So I'm not new to like. I've I I kind of like looked up his lines and it's like he's putting. It sounds like he's right on paper and he is, but the issue is he's completely putting the cart before the horse on this. This is called the non-literality fallacy and the issue here is obviously we can both look back and say, yes, baby boomers represent a tremendous drop off in church attendance. That's all he's pointed out, like by saying wow, we see, oh, percent raised in the church that attend the church, percent raised when he's talking about it. Going off a cliff would be when the children of baby boomers came of age and started applying to these statistics.

Speaker 2 28:26

Yeah, because look, a lot of Catholics do leave for a period of time and then come back right. I mean it happens to a lot of people, they have reversions and stuff like that.

Speaker 4 28:35

But all he's doing with pointing this dropout and then talking about the stabilizing key is actually proving my point real quick, and I'll get into why. I'm passionate because I think that's a great question, right, but real quick, all he's doing is saying, wow, here's what we already know. A huge number of people attended Mass Weekly went off a cliff, which is revealed in the 22%. When you start to see the children of baby boomers who never you know who might've grown up, confirmed, but you know they don't attend mass anymore. We see a drop off, we see abysmal retention rates. The very fact that it's going up, I think, speaks to my point that people who are now the children of Gen X being involved in these statistics and people who are even the children of late baby boomers that what's going up.

Speaker 4 29:15

He said it was 22% to 32% retention rate of easily attendance yeah. You know this. That's not what I'm.

Speaker 1 29:22

Yeah.

Speaker 4 29:26

It's okay, of course, okay, okay, well, I want to. I want to answer Anthony's question. Why am I passionate? In the catechism it says all men are bound to seek truth. Right, I absolutely love the truth. All men are guided towards truth, we're told in first john, and I think that there's merit in pursuing it.

Speaker 4 29:44

So I think to take statistics that would lead you to the conclusion that the church is going to be absolutely nuked in the next 10 years, and talking in absolutism like that, when it's not backed up by the math, and pointing out we already know, and making it seem like it proves a larger point and and then you know, going with the nonlinear era or of, like you know, they're doubling because it's such a small sample size, and saying that it's going to be the majority of the church next number of time, that's not pursuing the truth. So I'm not here to oppose anybody. I'm not here to make an argument against you. I just don't think that the numbers are lining up with what you're saying and the only thing you prove by that is what we already know that yes, it was abysmal for the church in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, but that's not a mystery and that's all you've shown.

Speaker 1 30:26

Well, they had higher retention rates back then. You literally said it yourself. You said 75% at the start of the council went, and then if you go to like 70%, that's not retention rates, it's attended, yeah, yeah. So then it drops, but it doesn't drop by a ton, by 75. It doesn't drop by a ton by 85, but then it starts to pick up. So let me give you I was about to give you this and this is what everybody you can go to any Novus Ordo parish and look around and ask yourself this question. Okay, because we're talking about you say it's going to be stable If you have and I'll start with the worst case and I'll go all the way up to the highest you want If you have a 32% retention rate, the average Novus Ordo married woman needs to have 6.6 children, just to keep the lights on, and probably a little more, because for every convert, 8.4.

Speaker 1 31:16

Leave, let's bump your numbers up. Let's say, hey, I have better defense, I have better retention rate. 42% retention rate. You need to have five children. Let's say 52% retention rate, so half my children will still remain in the faith and attend weekly. To be able to tithe you need to have an average of 4.03 children. And then at the highest end, the highest end of white Catholics who identify, we could use end, the highest end of white Catholics who identify, we could use Hispanic. I used white, white Catholics, uh.

Speaker 2 31:52

There we go. I want to point something out, because Hoosier said, baptisms, right, there's many baptisms. And even Cole saying, right, there's this many baptisms, so. And and even Cole saying, like, my parish had 30 baptisms this year, okay, so baptisms you have to be careful with, because there's convert baptisms, it's one thing I'm only counting infant for argument's sake, right, okay so now. Now infants are very tricky number, because I know tons of catholics who will get their infant baptized because they never go back to the ceremony right it's like

Speaker 2 32:25

oh, I'll go give the parish a few bucks, I'll baptize my infant. They never put their kids through communion. They never put them through even even adult converts.

Speaker 3 32:32

Half of adult converts are there because never get married, or something like that too.

Speaker 2 32:37

So oh, yeah, you have to actually look at the health of parishes and I can, I can tell you just just based on my observation of going to these parishes. So like even uh, al carbo say, he's like, oh, my parish has 50 000 registered members and he's in an area that's 90 or 19 000. It's in an area that has, in that area is 50 000 people and it's like that would mean there's a 50 of catalan. But what's really going on? There is he's in a very italian area, in staten island, and italians are still culturally catholic, like the us, you know they still, land is very limited, so it's a mega parish.

Speaker 4 33:17

So that might not be your best example, but but even even still, will you go to his parish on Sunday?

Speaker 2 33:23

It's not like his parish is packed and that's. With 19,000 registered members, the parish is.

Retention Rates and Mass Attendance

Speaker 4 33:28

Let me just get into the hard numbers with you, though, right, because I love what Ryan's trying to say and it's just. It's just like I said here's the cart, here's the horse. The issue is here's the cart, here's the horse. The issue is yes, obviously, if we had high 70s percentage of attendance and then you're going in a generation, which again this happened I'm not going to rewrite history down to we're at today, probably between 27 to 29%, yes, that is initially going to show that abysmal 32, 22% retention figure. The fact that it's going up shows that the current day retention figure of people who are being brought into the church right now is far higher, far higher.

Speaker 3 34:12

But dude, it's got to be like a total turnaround.

Speaker 1 34:14

You've got to bump those defense retention numbers up to 40 plus percent. Why does it have to be? Because, if you can't, because if your baptisms come in and they all leave, it doesn't keep the lights on and you're also, you also have to take into account what they're even teaching at these parishes.

Speaker 2 34:31

Man, like they're not and that's like you know, like, look, I'm not saying that there aren't good parishes out there, but I I go, I church hop and I have for years and man, I'm telling you it's abysmal in a lot of these places and those parishes that are abysmal, like they're just going to shut down when the, when their boomer attendees are gone. It's just, look, you guys can argue about like these figures, and that's one thing, but I I want to know why we should even be optimistic about the future of the like. Like I am optimistic about tradition growing, because I do see and this is all subjective of my own experience, what I'm seeing but when I go to the diocesan latin mass parishes in my, in my, in my diocese, they're vibrant, they have young children. When I go to a nova sordo, it is not vibrant and so, like my, my experience is playing out to what ryan is saying, where I know you're arguing for these numbers and stuff, but I I'm just experientially, ryan's, ryan's case seems way more plausible.

Speaker 4 35:38

Anecdotally, it's a slam dunk well, I mean that.

Speaker 1 35:42

That's why you just look at net loss parishes. Now who's your? You're kind of making the case that it's not based on demographics or my statistics. That's a fair argument to make if you want to make it. I don't particularly buy it because I couldn't find the math to. But you know I'll post the math publicly and someone else sure, sure go on that. But I I just ask anybody who's watching. It's like when you go to a Novus Ordo parish, do you see average families having four plus children and that's assuming a decent retention rate. Not decent historically, but for this day and age it would mean a 50% retention rate. You just have to look around. That's like. That's the math. If your retention rate's bad, you got to have a lot of kids. If your retention rate's not bad, like if it's the TLM, the TLM has a 75% retention rate. Roughly speaking, you need an average of 2.8 kids per family.

Speaker 4 36:34

Ryan, can I ask you something? Yes, how old is the average practitioner, Catholic practitioner, Practitioning Mainline Protestant? And this is not a gotcha, I'm just curious. The average sorry, the median it's hard to get an exact median based on certain demographic sectors and polls they take. For Mainline it's 58. That's pretty bad right. 51 for Evangelical Catholic is 49, two years younger, the youngest group in America is.

Speaker 3 37:04

I would argue that's not gonna save.

Speaker 2 37:06

save us from closing a thousand or two thousand oh, it's still a problem, don't get me right and I would and I would say a lot of the excitement it like and a lot of that younger um fervor is around tradition, it just is, and even if it's not tradition, the the younger fervor is around tradition, it just is.

Speaker 2 37:23

And even if it's not tradition, the younger fervor is definitely around Reverend Novus Ordo, at minimum, right, like all the young people that are coming in, they want this Reverend Novus Ordo.

Speaker 2 37:31

And if you just look around at what your average, like a lot of these parishes have these old priests who are still stuck in the 60s and 70s and they want to continue this thing along. So whether it's like straight up tradition is the future, like ryan's saying, or if it's at least this, this thing that we're seeing is dying out like it's, it's on its last legs and there there's a few things like you look at the detroit archbishop doing that uh, push the other day for the, for the migrants and the peace and all that stuff, and every single person in that picture was old. And it's like there was one young family in that picture. Everybody else was old. This is kind of what we're looking at and we're seeing as the bishops and the priests are aging. They're trying to hold on to this thing from their youth, but the new youth that is coming in has a very different perspective than they do.

Speaker 3 38:24

I would argue also like even acknowledging that we might have huge parish closers, like that's not doom and gloom, like I think it needs to happen for there to really be a rebirth. I'm not saying I want people to leave the church, obviously.

Speaker 2 38:38

No, and it's also sad when we see our cathedrals being given over to Muslims, things like that. It's devastating.

Speaker 3 38:45

And for the area I live in, our parish has 50,000 total Catholics, 70 parishes. I bet three-quarters of those parishes are gone in the next 10 to 15 years.

Speaker 3 38:58

In our area it's largely due to the demographic changes in yeah, yeah, in the in the rural area I live in, right, but that means not only will I have to drive two plus hours to go to the tlm, that means I think everyone in the diocese is going to be driving an hour plus to go to any mass and if they have an hour to go to any mass because they're in the rural areas, you'd be amazed how many people go.

Speaker 2 39:21

well, well, I'll just watch it on TV this week, you know, because we're making a sacrifice, because we're very passionate about it and we're willing to make that sacrifice. But look, because arguing about numbers and statistics and stuff is one thing, but just experientially. So you're coming in, where do you, where do you live in? You live in Indiana, indiana, indianapolis, indianapolis. Okay, so what is your parish like, life like, like when you go to your parish, what's it actually like on the ground?

Speaker 4 39:53

actually actually skews, pretty young. I mean a lot of hispanics. Okay, I often go to. I often go to the mass hispanic okay I I like it and it's I mean it's, it's done well, it is on the more reverent side of the coin. I, I will concede right, it's not a unicorn reverent but what do you?

Speaker 1 40:08

what would you guess? The average children per family is oh, it's hispanic man.

Speaker 4 40:13

It's a lot like four or five no, they might survive.

Speaker 1 40:18

Uh, where I'm from, I see about three. Yeah, you see what I see about three. In the Novus Ordo Spanish masses it's about three. And when you go to the English masses, now, depending on the parish, we actually have a Latin Novus Ordo parish which does very well, but on average if there are young people, I see about two, but they're still young and they may have more right.

Speaker 3 40:44

But it doesn't matter, because there's so few of them. Like when we went to our local Novus Ordo. You know we have three, we have a fourth on the way. The other young family has three, probably going to be having more. But I said the other young family, there's only one other 60 people in the parish and there's 10 people under the age of 50. And that's because the boomers didn't have a ton of kids and the kids they did have didn't stay. You know what I mean. So it's rough.

Speaker 1 41:15

So there was actually. I had an interesting back and forth on Twitter with a guy who left the SSPX. He was from Arizona and he told me the SSPX doesn't retain anyone because they've never built a new parish. So I just Googled that is the one he was talking about. They started off with seven families and now they have 500 parishioners and they're obviously expanding. Yeah, with with their infrastructure. The number of people when we go back to 33 ad not a lot of christians and by 300 ad 25 of the roman empire.

Speaker 1 41:50

the size doesn't matter, it's your projections and so for anyone says that like oh, you know we can argue, you know math back and forth and you know your math's off. I would ask anyone if you're going to invest in a company with these projection rates? I'm talking projection rates, I'm not talking numbers, because everyone says, oh, the traditionalists are so small, it doesn't matter. Yeah, but they only need to have 3.8 kids to grow, and they have 3.6 on average. That's why they're constantly.

Speaker 2 42:17

So there is, there is growth in there, but even then, look, I think another factor you have to add in here is we're in the Internet age too and there are a lot of like we're talking about retention rates. I can only tell you what the difference is from when I was a kid. When I was a kid, all my friends had to go to church on Sunday. My kids like, and their secular friends, they all think my kids are nuts because they go to church. They're like oh, you guys go to church, nobody is going to church anyway. There's just this, this climate in the secular world of people who just think nothing about going to church. So, like we can and and that's kind of spreading and it's getting worse and it's it's just an overall cultural thing that we have to factor into this as well.

Speaker 2 43:01

So, look, I'm like I I don't think any of us are arguing that the church is going to die, but I do. But I don't even think it's a doom and gloom thing to look at it the way ryan's looking at it either, and I do think you kind of have to um, cut off some of the dead weight and and those parishes that aren't being even, because there's a lot of parishes that are not teaching real Catholicism, right? So you kind of want those hippie parishes that are doing their, their silly things and stuff like those. Let those die off, let them go. It's not, it's all right, like what's going to survive is is a faithful remnant, like, like it's always done.

Speaker 1 43:37

The only concern I have and this will be my last doom and gloom, because the end of my tweet was positive If you're a pro-traditionalist, if you're anti-traditionalist, it is all doom and gloom.

Speaker 2 43:46

I'm not anti-traditionalist at all.

Latin Mass Growth vs. Novus Ordo Decline

Speaker 1 43:48

I don't think you are. We need an off-ramp. The church today, after Traditionus Custodes, basically said we're pulling up the off-ramp because that's what Benedict was trying to do, was give us an off-ramp. How do we graciously transition from the new mass, which does not have good retention, into to at least save the buildings? And that's what I'm, that's what I'm, that's what I'm concerned about.

Speaker 2 44:14

So your point?

Speaker 2 44:14

your point is they will have no choice but to let tradition thrive a bit if they want to keep any of their buildings right, like eventually, eventually, like it may take a little time, but eventually they're going to say, if this is the only thing making money, like if our diocese doesn't want to just go bankrupt over to, because they still make money on real estate holdings and stuff like that. So that a lot of these dioceses are staying afloat due to investments made when the church was healthy and booming right and a lot of it's real estate. So they bought a piece of property for 50 grand and now it's worth 5 million, things like that. So the our strike. New york is still extremely wealthy because it owns property, but not right I gotta hang on, I gotta say not albany, look, you know

Speaker 4 44:57

absolutely. I think in this, in this sort of period of, you know, secularism, secularism and decline, like, obviously it can refine it can, it can make diamonds, as we're told in Genesis. You know, you meant it for evil, but God used it for good and it took look, it took the Aryan crisis to give us the Nicene Creed. Yeah, right, I mean, tragic things can lead to great outcomes. I'm a Ratzinger right to my core. I don't think taking what Benedict did and said as an off-ramp would necessarily be.

Speaker 2 45:21

Yeah, I don't know if I'd describe it that way I don't know if I'd go that direction.

Speaker 4 45:24

I think that it is. I think that we need absolute liturgical freedom, and I think I'm going to just we saw what they said about liturgical freedom. Can you charitably know what I meant by that? Yes, yes, I do. You do what I'm saying. Can you charitably know what?

Speaker 2 45:39

I meant by that yes, I do. You do what I'm saying Nobody's going to own you. It was a funny thing to say.

Speaker 4 45:45

Yeah, obviously. So two things. Number one obviously the traditional Latin mass has seen growth in a society where people are more than ever craving authenticity. They want something real, and there is something very real about that. I would worry about blind what I'm calling, and this is actually part of why I wanted to discuss I came. Most of your viewers are traditional or traditionally inclined, like I wanted to come into.

Speaker 2 46:09

I don't think so really maybe most, maybe most. Yeah, a soft spot for traditionalism.

Speaker 4 46:14

Yeah, yeah, definitely I wanted to.

Speaker 4 46:17

I wanted to tell people like there's a lot to be pessimistic about but there's also a lot to be optimistic about, like I said earlier, like I can't help but be optimistic. And two, I think you do risk looking at something with very low supply and currently way higher demand than the supply because of, frankly, the terrible action of restricting the Latin mass. Disgusting action of restricting the Latin mass, mess, disgusting action of restricting the Latin mass. But if you're going to say that that's just going to be unfettered growth, that's going to continue and this is a nonlinear at the pace of even close to father, close to his own numbers prove that it's only realistically growing at a rate of 15% a year, which is staggering, but that's at a small proportion with probably among 133,000 weekly practitioners. To say that that's the quote, unquote, off ramp of the church ignores the bigger problem and we need to go to battle Like we have a lot to do, there's a lot of work left to be done. Just saying the numbers are on my side. That's my cause for all optimism.

Speaker 1 47:10

That's why I didn't. I didn't use those numbers. I use the SSPX because they didn't have this pent up energy. The Samoin pontificum unleashed I and they have a four percent growth rate which, like you, don't have.

Speaker 2 47:24

Okay, all right, I want to jump I want to jump into that a little. So samorin pontificum actually didn't unleash this pent-up anything like so when. When samorin came out, it wasn't like an explosion of latin masses, they were very slow. They pop up here and there. It wasn't. And what I think bened think Benedict wanted to do with Samorum was what he said he wanted there to be mutual enrichment, not from the Latin mass, like, not from the Novus Ordo to the Latin mass. He wanted the Novus Ordo. He was hoping there would be these bifurcated parishes and that people would pick up some of the more beautiful traditions the church had from the past and bring those back like and it actually did work on some cases. It wasn't like universal, but there was definitely some mutual enrichment, like even the parish rob went to when he was growing up and had it was like a bifurcated parish essentially, but the novus ordo that was very reverent because of that, like the the parish I go to. No, not at all. But okay.

Speaker 2 48:23

Oh, all right, I thought that's what you said, no, no. So the parish I go to, even the Novus Ordo, they use the communion rails, especially St Rocco's. St Rocco's will have Ad Orientum, novus Ordo, things like that. So there is some mutual enrichment that did pass from the TLM to the Novus Ordo. I think that's what Benedict was hoping for, because he really did see the Novus Ordo as a banal.

Speaker 2 48:48

He hated it, I mean he celebrated it, but he wasn't a fan of it, like he wrote the Spirit of the Liturgy and he criticized it constantly.

Speaker 1 48:56

Well, I mean if you're correct and there wasn't pent-up energy, then the growth of traditional parishes is even higher than I expect. I only calculated it, it is.

Speaker 2 49:06

Okay, so a few things that lead to that. There was a huge boom in 2017, especially. We're just talking about America. I don't know what it's like worldwide in America, I only know America.

Speaker 2 49:16

In 2017, when the McCarrick scandal broke, there was definitely a big boom, because that's when the podcast scene starts breaking out and you start hearing all these podcasters talk about go to the Latin mass, go to the Latin mass. We're all we're getting a Morris Leticia and everybody's kind of panicking. And look for what the liberals accuse it of and say they used the Latin mass as a as a like a rallying point. That is kind of true, like it is. I'm not blaming any particular person. It just kind of was a rallying point for people who were so fed up with all the craziness going on in the church and the character scandals so they went there.

Speaker 2 49:49

Then, when covid hit, covid was like another insane boom because all a lot of the nova sordo parishes stayed closed and the ones that actually did start opening up sooner were the traditional latin masses. And then people would go there one time and they say, wow, they're actually all the things I'm wishing they had in the Novus Ordo, because all faithful Catholics are always going on and on about the Reverend Novus Ordo. We need a Reverend Novus Ordo.

Speaker 2 50:10

Then they go to a Latin mass like, wait, everything I'm wanting them to do there they're doing here. So usually Catholics who want a Reverend Novus Ordo, they get an experience of the Latin mass and they're kind of like, well, why am I fighting for a Reverend Novus Ordo? It would just have everything that you know they're lacking over there. So, yeah, I think I think arguing over like, like, demographics and things like that, I almost think it's it's fine, you could do it. But just think about your experience on the ground and what you're seeing out there and I'm telling you around and I travel, I travel around and anytime I go on vacation I go and I go to a nova sordo and I because that's pretty much all you have access to when you go see what it's like on the ground. It's kind of bearing out what ryan's saying, that it's just a lot of older people's that and and the funny thing is a lot of them that are going. They're going because I don't want to make this sound like I'm trashing the Novus Ordo. It's just there's a lot of people that go to the Novus Ordo for, like, heaven, insurance, just because it's like, oh well, you know, I'll go to church, I'm supposed to go to church on Sunday. There's a lot of people who go because it's kind of a cultural thing where it's just well, I was raised this way so I'm going to continue to go. There are pockets, of course, of faithful Catholics who had reversions and conversions and those are the people listening to the Scott Hahn tapes and the things like that and they're always trying to invigorate their parish and get them to come to talks and come to the Lenten mission and things like that. But the average person that goes to a Novus Ordo is not generally like that. A Novus Ordo is not generally like that.

Speaker 2 51:42

Now, what you have in the Latin mass is this concentration of many times people who attended the Novus Ordo kind of got fed up with that lackadaisical attitude and now they're going to a Latin mass and you have these concentrations of people at the Latin mass who are on fire for their faith because they sought it out.

Speaker 2 51:57

It's not like the Latin mass produced it, it's like they sought out the Latin mass because their faith was on fire, right. So now you have these huge parishes and, like I'm telling you, when I go to the Latin mass, the standing room only in many times and they're all young people who were on fire for the faith who sought this out. So it's you have very few people at those Latin mass parishes who were just there because this is my local parish that I'm going. You got people driving from all over the place to go to. So I do think there's this concentration of people who are on fire for their faith and looking to make it grow and telling people to come to their parish, and I don't see that in the Novus Ordo the same way.

Speaker 4 52:34

I don't. I mean to say you have to have some sort of born again experience to be faithful.

Speaker 3 52:42

I don't, I don't know about that. I don't think he's saying that. No, no, no, I know what you're saying to a degree.

Speaker 4 52:46

So, like, what you're kind of getting at is look, there is to the issue. Like you're totally right, people who are faithful are more likely to. There's almost 100, basically all. It's not even discussing the people who attend latin mass that don't believe in real presence. But again, it's like chicken egg right.

Speaker 2 53:03

You Okay. So you know how they always show those surveys where it's like 1% in the Latin mass don't believe in the real presence. I think that's like a statistical error that they allow for, because I'm telling you, I've never been to a Latin mass where the people aren't very intentional about going to the Latin mass. Every single person. Chicken or egg, though. Every single person kicking her egg though, well, no. So in other words, it's you may have young kids there, but they're all kind of new families that are just discovering the latin mass, like it's all I found.

Speaker 2 53:29

Maybe the sspx is different because the sspx, like they've been at it for so long, but most of the diocesan latin mass parishes I've gone to are people very intentionally seeking out the latin mass because they're already on. It's not like a born again experience, it's more just like they. They were seeking out a group of people who felt the same way they did about the faith and they kind of congregated in those places and I and whereas your local nova sorda parish is just the geographical parish that people go because they just happen to go and they may not have that same firm and actually that's not even always the case.

Speaker 3 54:04

A lot of times your novus ordo parishes are. People are going there because they like that priest, or be they like that the liberal parish, or they like you know, so on, so forth.

Speaker 2 54:14

So yeah, that's kind of the irony of the novus ordo too, because the novusdo, when it was implemented, what it did was you then have your local parish, might have a liberal priest preaching there. So like you'll have, your politically conservative person goes to there and he's like I don't want to hear this nonsense because they're talking politics or whatever they're doing. So they go seek out another parish that has a more conservative. So people, even at the Novus Ordo, are parish hopping until they find a parish that they are hearing the thing they want to hear, even if they're not driving the hour and a half to go to the Latin. It's a really weird thing that happened with the-.

Speaker 3 54:49

Yeah, like my grandma, for instance, who went to the parish I grew up in. Like you mentioned earlier, was an old TLM adult parish but had the Novus Ordo. I mean that was the parish she was in for 60 years of her life. Within the last 10 years she has gone to a different parish because she doesn't like the conservative preaching of the priest at the parish she was at for 60 years. So now she goes to a Novus Ordo parish where the guy literally ad-libs like the Eucharistic prayer.

Speaker 2 55:20

Yeah, yeah, I've been to. I've been to Novus Ordo parishes where the priests refused to implement the changes Benedict made, where they were still saying and with your and also with you. And when he said the, when he said the, the creed, he said for us men and us women and our salvation, like weird things that would happen there, you know, and it's like you're going to get some people that get fed up. They're like I'm not dealing with this, I'm going to find something better.

Speaker 4 55:44

If the only mass was the Latin mass right. My only thing is, the liberal priest would just be saying Latin mass and then giving a liberal homily.

Speaker 2 55:52

They could give a liberal homily. I'll give you that, that's definitely the rubrics wouldn't allow for them Right.

Speaker 2 55:56

So, in other words, there would still be only communion on the tongue, they would still only be altar boys, they would still like that, and also the prayers are very different. So it's not. A lot of people have this impression that the Novus Ordo is is just the Latin mass in English and that the Latin mass is just the Novus Ordo in Latin. And it's just not the case. It's it's. It's drastically different. It's theology is drastically different in its, in its presentation everything different in its theology is drastically different in its, in its presentation everything.

Speaker 2 56:23

So, yeah, you definitely could get um priests, even look, even the the accusation they make about the low masses in the fifties, where the priests were just mumbling their way through and trying to get through it as quick as they could and there was old ladies praying their rosary. Even that is going to be better than your typical like-the-mill parish in a general community where you have altar girls up there kind of. And look, the altar girls thing lends confusion to the gender roles and there's all these subliminal things that really do lend to the confusion of the faith at the on at a novus ordo parish and I'm not like I don't want people to think I'm, I'm saying if you go to the novus ordo, there's nothing like that. I'm not like. I don't want people to think I'm. I'm saying if you go to the Novus Ordo, there's nothing like that. I'm just talking in general about what most people's experience is If they're not traveling to find the unicorn, you know.

Speaker 4 57:09

Yeah, sorry, no, go ahead. They can't touch the Eucharistic prayer. That would be legitimate and just out of the out, beyond it and liturgical. Yeah, that they can't touch it's kind of funny.

Speaker 1 57:19

I have a. My priest is an excellent speaker, um, but it's like I don't even you know, sometimes if the weather's hot, he just doesn't give one because the church is getting hot and I don't really mind, because the mass itself is sufficient, I don't need the homily, whereas in the notice, ordo, um, you know, you can have good homilists, and so then people rob to point, they kind of bounce parishes, and it just it kind of reminds me of what my family was like as Protestants. Is what's the differentiation between most Protestants? There's a slight dogma difference, but then I mean, in reality you're just going to whoever gives the best sermons.

Speaker 2 57:58

Well, look, okay. So the local Novus Ordo I go to, when I when I have to go, like I go to confession there and stuff, and the priest gives fiery conservative orthodox homilies, but it is one of the worst liturgies I've ever seen in my life. It's just the, the, and I'm not even saying it's just the goofy music. Like they sing the Our Father in a way that you're just like what are they doing right now? Like why would they do this? Why are they singing this? Like it's a nursery rhyme and they'll have girls behind the altar and it's always they have the Eucharist, extraordinary Ministers. It's always the short hair lesbian coming in with the hand gel going like this. It's like it's a sacramental for them. It's just so you may get the very orthodox sermon from the priest, but the liturgy itself it's so like lackadaisical in most places that I do think this has a subliminal effect on people and I know we weren't coming on here to argue nova sordo versus latin. I'm just, yeah, like I don't want to, I don't want anything.

Speaker 3 59:00

I'm like pitting you down on people that and I know we weren't coming on here to argue Novus Ordo versus Latin.

Speaker 2 59:02

I don't want anything. I'm like pitting you down and telling you anything like that. I'm just talking from experience of what I've gone through.

Speaker 4 59:10

That's what you're saying. I resonate with it too, but these are.

Speaker 2 59:17

It's not the topic we're discussing. I understand.

Speaker 4 59:20

I don't even have a problem with that. Like, obviously I'm not going to get into the ins and outs and caveats of sacrosanctum concilium, but but I don't think you could fully now a tired trope used against, um, traditionalists would be. Well, you know, I know a priest or they all say it too. It's weird like I know a priest who are stumbling through the latin mass in the olden days it's like on cue just all the time right yeah, yeah, it's the same phrase.

Speaker 4 59:41

They always, they always lazy trope right yeah but to pretend like liturgical abuse is just the offspring of one council, when literally um I'm blanking here like they reformat yesterday sorry, it's getting a little Pentecostal on you.

Speaker 2 1:00:00

What Speaking in tongues, papaya?

Speaker 3 1:00:01

papaya, papaya.

Speaker 4 1:00:03

The Council of Trent actually addressed liturgical abuse. Yeah, no, no. We've seen this before many times, so I don't think you can say it's necessarily the fruit of one council, right? No, no, no.

The Impact of Vatican II on Catholic Identity

Speaker 2 1:00:15

Look, there was a liturgical reform. The liturgical renewal was wanted at the time of the council and they were, and they were faithful priests that wanted it right. They were like, okay, look, we have, there there is. There was a staleness to the liturgy in the fifties. I'm not denying that at all. Um and and okay. So why don't we? Why don't we get over to the council a little bit? Because you said you don't think that, uh, you could pin the blame for all the things we're seeing on the council. You're probably right, there were many cultural factors that were going on.

Speaker 2 1:00:44

We're dealing with time from the Enlightenment, this whole period of everybody you know already not taking their like, learning their faith. It was like wrought memorization and the catechism and things like that. So there might not have been this evangelical fervor going on, things like that. But you have to take into account that the how important liturgy actually is and the liturgy that built civil is like built christian civilization that developed organically over 2 000 years. Then all of a sudden gets uprooted and they, they put this thing in place.

Speaker 2 1:01:19

That I'm not saying it's invalid, I'm not saying it's like nothing like that. It's the Catholic mass. Jesus Christ is present. The Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ. I'm not saying any of that. But to uproot the foundation of Christian civilization because the mass is the foundation of Christian civilization and just replace it overnight the way they did, you can't downplay the catastrophic effects that would have on the Catholic, the Catholic mindset, the Catholic ethos, like all of it. It just, it all played a very big factor in it. So whether it was the soul cause or a very big cause of it, you can't separate that.

Speaker 4 1:02:00

Can I feel that real quick? And then I'd love to hear Ryan. I'd love to hear Ryan. I did write down some quotes, just because I couldn't memorize them off the dome, but I searched them out on my own. I think that my culprit here. I'm not going to say that there was some sort of like vast string of liturgical abuse before and that carried on, or like the priests who did Vatican.

Speaker 4 1:02:25

II were forged in the fires of Vatican I. I'm not going to make that claim. What I am going to say is we live and die by catechesis. Like in the words of St John Vianney if man could truly understand the mass, he would die of joy. You're not going to have a perfect understanding of it, but you need to know what's going on.

Speaker 4 1:02:39

And Vatican II, whether perfect or not like it, did actually try to address the problem of catechesis. And not only that. I think poor catechesis was legitimately going on in the church. At this point I'll give you some quotes to prove this. Fulton Sheen, in 1946, the venerable, said many Catholics today are ignorant of their faith, more so than their forefathers, largely due to insufficient catechesis and poor religious education in their youth, and their forefathers largely due to insufficient catechesis and poor religious education in their youth. We are suffering because Catholics do not know their faith. In the 1920s, in what was, in terms of butts and pews, the halcyon of American Catholicism, the golden age, Indianapolis' own Archbishop Francis McConnell said we face a widespread neglect of catechetical discipline which imperils the face of countless amidst growing secular pressures in America. In 1947, the National Catholic Welfare Conference took it a bridge further, the inadequacy of religious education programs in american parishes contributes to a fragile and superficial catholic identity that that predates and I'll grant all those things and I'll say, after the council, the catechesis got infinitely worse.

Speaker 3 1:03:38

Infinitely worse because, like infinitely worse Like infinitely worse right. Even the catechesis before the council was Whoa.

Speaker 4 1:03:44

I didn't know.

Speaker 3 1:03:45

Those catechisms were being written by by those in charge of the council. Are we under arrest? Yeah, what are you doing, rob? It's like a fidget toy.

Speaker 2 1:03:57

Okay. So the catechesis then gets exceedingly worse after the council and what they're now missing is the experiential catechesis of the Roman Rite, right? So the Mass itself is catechetical. When you go and you treat the Eucharist where you're kneeling and you're receiving it every single mass, there's something subconscious that happens in that act. So even if you, even if you don't understand the Latin, the very fact that the priest is up there whispering you, you take it subconsciously and you, you say, oh man, something is happening here.

Speaker 2 1:04:33

And I know that because of the first couple of Latin masses I went to and I didn't understand a thing that was going on. It thing that was going on, it had like a very pressing feeling on my heart and this was just the experience of it. I was like, whoa, there's something transcendent happening here. And it goes from that transcendent experience that, look, the Middle Ages people couldn't read right, it's not like they were going and going for these very deep Bible studies, but it still converted the pagan world. I mean you're talking about 98% of people were illiterate. But there was something about the mass itself and the rituals that the Catholic church performed that would transform entire cultures and it would catechize them through the liturgy and those rituals that we did, and when you uproot that, it has a psychological effect on the entire culture.

Speaker 1 1:05:19

I think root that it has a psychological effect on the entire culture. I think saint john henry newman, who's now a doctor of the church uh, stated that in his study of the traditional latin mass he dated almost all of its essentials to the third century.

Speaker 4 1:05:32

This is ancient like you can't just redo it in the council now they, they didn't and I didn't, I would, I would warn you, I'd actually say you got to be very. You gotta really walk in actions and saying that, because if you say that they fully redid it in a way that was not within continuity, you would have to be saying that the Roman pontiff could err in the promulgation of the literature.

Speaker 2 1:05:51

No, yeah, Nobody's saying that. Well, who's your?

Speaker 4 1:05:53

have.

Speaker 2 1:05:56

So you go, I bet Okay, okay, I'm just asking. I'm not making accusations or anything, I'm just asking.

Speaker 1 1:06:05

Yeah, go ahead. So we want to talk about my response to Hoosier's statement.

Speaker 4 1:06:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead, by all means, by all means. I'd love to hear it.

Speaker 1 1:06:12

I would put Vatican II kind of in a category of and I'm not going to differentiate between the council and the reforms, because that's a whole different debate. Vatican ii is just often quoted and never read the the document. The council is longer than the new testament. It didn't just change the mass, it changed everything and that's that's really big. Because when you that's why I bring up John Henry Newman's statement is when you have something that's gone on for 1500 plus years and then you don't just tinker with it, you do completely whatever you want, you can word, police me however you want, but you change massive amounts of it.

Speaker 1 1:07:01

Then the other sacraments we haven't even gotten to confession. Uh, the entire calendar. That's really that's very strange. The whole calendar changes. Um, but to your point on whether or not it was the culture or the actual council, there was written July of this year. There was an NBER paper that came out that said Vatican II triggered a decline in worldwide Catholic attendance relative to other denominations. It looked at 66 countries, it went back all the way to the 1920s in terms of mass retention and it said that Catholic relative attendance rates fell 4% each decade compared to other denominations. Other denominations were also hit with the culture wars of the 60s? Okay, so if you're, but we're falling behind them each decade by four additional percentage points.

Speaker 4 1:08:01

If you're going to're gonna get okay national review. I looked into that and I just I I wanted to believe it so I could be like, okay, I do this sort of summa theologica-esque, I give you the most charitable thing I can. I don't buy the numbers in there at all. The thing is, frankly, the church doubled beyond even fertility rate expectations, and after the second vatican council I'm not saying because of right now in.

Speaker 2 1:08:23

America or worldwide?

Speaker 1 1:08:25

worldwide population worldwide populations tripled after the Second Vatican Council.

Speaker 4 1:08:35

The church exploded in Africa. That's because infant mortality rate.

Speaker 1 1:08:40

But, rob, can I pull up an exhibit?

Speaker 4 1:08:43

but you all hang on, hang on. But you also have to understand that a lot of these african countries if we're talking about, like ebo majority and abibio majority states in nigeria, or parts of ghana, or the people in the ivory coast, they have like 98 mass attendance rates.

Speaker 3 1:08:59

That I can do hasn't been but they they also have like second and third wives and higher witch doctors too no, no, that's not, that's a.

Speaker 2 1:09:06

That's very uncommon, no but you're also kind of proving the point of the, the cultural impact of changing the mass from from a culture that already had it right. So they were evangelized with the novus ordo, but they didn't have their, their mass taken from them. It's, it's a, it's a different, it's a different animal altogether, I would think.

Speaker 4 1:09:25

But the orthodox have never changed really meaningfully like their liturgy, but the orthodox have the lowest church attendance rates of anybody in the west well, that's what chisel will do.

Speaker 1 1:09:32

So yeah, um, all the growth in africa occurred before 1970. I have a graph. I don't know if I was able to get the graph over to rob, but I can I did not get any emails from you, just that's why I'll post it after the debate on twitter or send it to me on twitter, dm to me well I

Speaker 2 1:09:52

did there's just too many variables with africa. It's not a. I just thought like I don't like how we're like.

Speaker 4 1:09:59

Oh, the church doubled in size, but all that growth was in africa and it's and asia, and it actually stayed pretty stable in latin america, started to taper off 25 years ago and now the brazilian catholic bishops conference is reporting for the first time in a 17 year window actually an uptick in mass attendance okay, but what are that?

Speaker 2 1:10:15

what? What version of catholicism are they teaching? In latin america, though, they're teaching like, um, liberation, liberation theology and stuff like. That's not real, that you have to take that into account as well. Right, like what are they actually? Because, in africa especially, you're talking about a, a third world continent, right, so you're talking many parts not of it, but many parts of it are third world continent. These are entire villages who, like the local parish is their life and they're living the way we probably did before technology really hit us, right.

The Importance of Liturgy in Faith Formation

Speaker 2 1:10:51

So, before especially the 50s and the television comes into play and things like that, the parish community in America was the lifeblood of these groups of people and they were all, um, like, uh, uh, culturally coherent. Right, so you had your italian parish and you had your irish parish, and you had so that that coherence meant something that kept them together. Now, once you start messing around with, on top of, like, all the stuff we're talking about, you start talking about, like, immigration flooding in, and you're talking about the way they did it, what they did in the cities with, like, pushing these ethnic communities apart and everybody moving out to the suburbs, and things like that. Those are big factors in it as well, where you no longer have that ethnic glue to keep these parishes together. There's so many factors. It's not just the council, it's not just the mass. There are other things at play here.

Speaker 3 1:11:49

Robert Luis Anthony goes fairly regularly. I went almost exclusively until like six months ago. So no, we're not unaware. You haven't been to the nova sordo since 2018 to 2020.

Speaker 2 1:12:03

There's a split in the nova sordo which you're apparently unaware of. The conversation could have taken place, and I don't even this is ridiculous yeah, I think you're just denying reality there, but no, I think what she's saying is that the nova sordo is starting to kind of like heal.

Speaker 1 1:12:16

I have seen that I see more veils. Um, because I go here and there for confession, I've seen literally a parish that I described as a quasi-nursing home. That's how old everyone was. I've started all of a sudden seeing people in their 20s with veils, which is a good thing, it's a very promising sign.

Speaker 4 1:12:37

I see old women veil at the Wednesday Mass, not the Tuesday Masses that I go to like but they're spanish, right like.

Speaker 2 1:12:43

That's the white, white.

Speaker 1 1:12:44

Oh wow, a lot, of, a lot of polls, but white I think I saw robert lee say that, like he was in mexico and it's really bad, like latin america is in an atrocious state. Uh, 83 percent of catholics, 83 percent of mexicans, identified as as catholic in 2010. Now it's down to 74. In venezuela, it's gone from 81 to 64 here's your, here's your.

Speaker 4 1:13:08

Africa by the way that's not atrocious at all compared to the west no, I'm not.

Speaker 1 1:13:12

It gets worse. Argentina 76 to 49, this is in 10 years. 66 to 55 in brazil ch. Chile went from 61% to 53%.

Speaker 2 1:13:24

You're also bleeding Catholics to Pentecostalism down there. Mormonism they're on the rise down there. It's all vile.

Speaker 1 1:13:32

That was part of Cardinal Pell's critique of the Amazonian Synod is that we're not even addressing these very, very concerning statistical drips.

Speaker 4 1:13:42

Like I said, by the numbers of Adilio Cardinacere. Brazil has cauterized the bleeding, argentina underwent and Chile did too, and this is true A similar period with about a 30 to 35 year delay of secularization. We see a rapid snap and decline. They're going to go through their own reckoning, that is true, but I'm not going to slander the fidelity of the body in Latin America just because the numbers have gone down 10% in X year window. That's nothing compared to what we've seen in America. I don't think those numbers are a demographic mandate.

Speaker 1 1:14:12

This is the problem is, whenever you bring up a legitimate factual statement, apparently we're just slandering people. It's like, guys, if the people in the Titanic who rang the warning bell for the iceberg came back down to the captain's quarters and they said why are you slandering the Titanic? This ship can't sink. We've all seen that scene in the movie. That's exactly what's going on in the church right now is you've got the rich investor who says, well, this ship can't sink because he's emotionally invested in this. And you've got the guy who built the ship, looked at the map and said we have two hours at most. It's a mathematical certainty.

Speaker 4 1:14:46

No, it actually. I want to clarify, I want to double down it cannot, and here's why the second Vatican. Look did the fifth Lateran council really succeed resoundingly at its original goal? I think we can both agree no, it did not. Did the Council of Florence unequivocally succeed? No, was God any?

Speaker 3 1:15:07

less Kind of for a few years. Yeah, I'm not making a comment.

Speaker 4 1:15:10

I'm not making a comment. I'm not making a comment. This is not me. This is not me hitting at you. Hang on, hang on, no, no, no. This is not me hitting at you. This is just me talking about the general, the general understanding we have to have, looking at this in the future of the church. Right in in any of this right I will not. In psalm 89, 34, I will not alter my covenant. God is faithful to us. His covenant lives on through the church. There are councils that have failed, and the thing too is, let's look at some of the councils that would have said failed at the time can.

Speaker 3 1:15:42

Can you name a council that first followed a drop like we've seen since vatican 2?

Speaker 4 1:15:48

though I totally could really let's hear council of nicaea in 325 arians exploded. Afterwards constantine actually flipped his views in the arians in terms, in terms of the bishops.

Speaker 3 1:15:58

But what about? What about? Oh, what about?

Speaker 4 1:16:02

the population. Did people stop going to mass? Well, we don't have mass attendance. The pew research, no, but that's a very important point, rob.

Speaker 2 1:16:07

Right, so like the bishops may have, but yeah, so like. That doesn't mean people stop going to mass and and also look yes, no, god is faithful to his covenant, but there's no promise about the american church. It's not like he, like. We don't know what could happen and there have been like the faith has been decimated in the middle east, where god originally came to to the earth. Right, there's no catholicism left. When you go into damascus now you go, so it doesn't just because the covenant will never like, god will never break his covenant and the gates of hell will never prevail. But that doesn't mean there can't be insane amounts of upheaval and abandonment of the church, because I think the main crisis we're dealing with right now is a crisis of unfaithfulness, and that has happened throughout all of salvation history. Where, where Israel abandoned God? Oh God, I'll let you go.

Speaker 4 1:16:58

I mean, I feel like I'm in, I feel like such a you know no, it's okay.

Speaker 4 1:17:02

No, we're just we're just free talking nobody's during, during the count, and I could the council of chalcedon too. During the time, a lot of people started saying, well, you're just preaching historianism again. And the monophysitists a lot of them ended up becoming, ultimately their descendants became gnostics and muslims. Um, it's not a clear linear progression, but two the Arian heresy exploded. It wasn't until Theodosius that we saw this sort of reversal, because of the faithful. The faithful, if we're in a remnant church, we are no less in a church to which God is, I would agree with that.

Speaker 2 1:17:34

I mean, look at the look at the Protestant Reformation. Protestant Reformation, I mean the church was decimated in Europe, Right, and you only have the church continuing on with this with with the robustness that it does, because then we evangelize in Central and South America, Right. So now you have Our Lady appearing to Juan Diego and you get this robust new Second Christendom.

Speaker 3 1:17:55

The Jesuits reconverted most of. Europe prior to the Enlightenment.

Speaker 2 1:18:01

You still had a devastation of the Church. You no longer had Catholic kings. It was a complete.

Speaker 1 1:18:08

But it wasn't because.

Speaker 3 1:18:09

But that wasn't the fault of Trent. Trent was a response to that. Yeah, trent was a response to that.

Speaker 2 1:18:14

Yeah, Trent was a response to that.

Speaker 4 1:18:15

Would, you blame the Lateran Council for the Reformation. No, that would be nonsensical.

Speaker 1 1:18:20

But the Protestant Reformation didn't occur because Catholics stopped going to Mass.

Speaker 2 1:18:25

Right, it was a top-down forcing them right.

Speaker 1 1:18:28

Basically German princes who didn't want to be under Thomas Brown.

Speaker 1 1:18:31

Yeah, it was political, and the difference between trent and vatican, too, is trent. I mean, they literally doubled down on almost everything and basically said well, we're just going to go into the culture now, um, create broke art, all this stuff, uh, funded beautiful cathedrals, all that. They didn't change the mass or the sacraments or the calendar. In fact, they said that if you it's in a canon in trent, that if you claim that the mass has errors and is therefore abrogated, you are anathema. It was the complete opposite and it was very successful, not in its time.

Speaker 4 1:19:08

It actually took a very long time not 80 years.

Speaker 3 1:19:11

There was, there was. I mean you had francis de sale within a decade or two after trent, reconverting 80 000 in in geneva. So no, no, it's not like it took 80 years and we're seeing it accelerate now, 80 years after vatican ii.

Speaker 2 1:19:25

Well, the truth is for a new convert. And you, you do have a pretty good grasp on catholic catholic history.

Speaker 4 1:19:33

I'll give you that but the thing too is, like trent, the mass is only unchanged. Like I care very dearly about my faith, like, and just to be able to talk to you guys about this, like it matters, like this is the fact that, ultimately, like, we are looking towards the same thing, which is the, you know, we're just arguing about.

Speaker 1 1:19:53

Yeah, I would.

Speaker 2 1:19:55

I would argue. All four of us deeply love the Catholic faith. We deeply love the churches. This is a conversation and it's okay to even disagree about this. It's not a matter of faith and morals either. Like you can, you can have a different position. It's fine the language might've said the same.

Speaker 4 1:20:08

the Gallican right of the Catholic, the Gallican form of the Catholic mass was not the same as the unchanging Roman rite. It was only unchanged in the papal states, and Trent is what standardized that.

Speaker 1 1:20:20

Yeah, I mean to minor degrees. You'd have to get a liturgical expert in here, which I don't think any of us are.

Speaker 2 1:20:27

But from most of what I've heard is that Trent kind of standardized certain local practices and local deviations, but it was largely unchanged throughout most Largely unchanged, and Trent basically said if there is a custom that is not longer than 200 years old, we don't want it, because it was right at the time of the Reformation. So all these new things were popping up. So Trent was like, look, a custom needs to be 200 years old for you to be able to keep it in your mess.

Speaker 3 1:20:57

The Gallican Rite wasn't abrogated. It continued to exist. The Sam Rite continued to exist. The Mozo-Arabic Rite continued. It wasn't like the Novus Ordo, where that was imposed on literally the entire Roman Rite or Latin Church. I should say so it's definitely different there.

Speaker 1 1:21:17

I mean, I guess the question I would ask, like if people are on the fence, is like my position is essentially that it looks bad for the churches that follow the reforms of Vatican II. But if the data is looking really good for traditionalist parishes and we all love the church that's the critique people throw back at traditionalists. It's like oh, you just want things the way you want them. Well, if the future, statistically, is looking more traditionalist in its liturgy, I could ask the exact same question to more of the modernist bend.

Speaker 1 1:21:52

Or people who attend the Novus Ordo Do you actually care if it's going to be the? Or people who attend the novus ordo is like do you actually care if it's going to be the traditional latin mass or the novus ordo, as long as the churches are healthy, we've stabilized hoosier I. I hope you're right and that you've hit kind of this stopping point where you're going to get your foot in and then start climbing again. But it's putting a lot of eggs in a basket of data we don't have yet. Like if gen z just explodes, maybe. But my question is is just like do we actually do? Do people who attend the nocus ordo have such an idea? And that's my point about rome. Does rome have such an ideological opposition to this? Okay, at the moment, it seems.

Speaker 4 1:22:30

So you make a really good point, right. First off, um, I believe please don't quote me on this, but I'm I'm over 95 sure the gallican right was abrogated, I believe only the toledo right, as done by um local members of the dominican order, and then the ambrosian right and the diocese of milan are the only surviving surviving to today yeah, I don't know the extent I might, so again you might have me on that.

Speaker 4 1:22:52

Look, at the end of the day, like you make a lot of good points, the future is going to be a lot more traditional. Like there is a craving.

Speaker 2 1:22:57

We hope, but we should all hope that, like even you should hope that right like we, we, even if it's not tlm, that's what we should we should hope the future is more traditional, because the, the, the craziness of the council look so like right after the 1960s and 70s, like there was insanity in the mass, like you're talking experimentation on levels that are. And then John Paul II came in and he tried to settle some of that down. Benedict even more tried to settle it down. Then Benedict gave us some more in Pontificum and he was hoping that it would even more settle. That Like the mayhem of the 70s and 80s is. I mean, we've had priests. We had to have a diocese recently come out and say, look, this priest was baptized and we have video of it. And the priest at the parish said we baptize you in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit which means every wedding he performed, every confession he heard, every mass he celebrated was invalid.

Finding Hope for the Future of Catholicism

Speaker 2 1:23:55

Like that is insane to think that things were so wild in this time period, during this liturgical change, that there may have been millions of people who had invalid sacraments because the freaking priests were so off the wall. So, luckily I don't think it was a one-off. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Man like that, that dude for a diocese to make that announcement right, it's because there was video evidence. I'm telling you, in the 70s and 80s things were so nuts when those back, when those changes were first coming into effect, there were many invalid masses, said during that period was also.

Speaker 4 1:24:32

It was in the diocese of Los Angeles. He was also an immigrant.

Speaker 2 1:24:34

No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't Los Angeles. It wasn't Los Angeles, it was in the Midwest.

Speaker 3 1:24:40

Um, uh you're thinking of the. You might be thinking of the sangria invalid masses which were in Kansas city. That's very possible Me or Hoosier Hoosier, I don't. I don't. Off the top of my head, I don't remember where the the bad baptism was, but I know the St Greer was in Kansas city.

Speaker 4 1:24:59

The other one, I don't know, maybe Milwaukee, Detroit, Detroit, I think. I digress, Um and look it's a more. I mean, it's a moral, obviously, to restrict the TLM, Like it's terrible. This is happening and I don't think any of the justifications have been given are legitimate. But I don't think that they're going to make up the majority of the church. I think the future of the church needs to be people who take what is in the mass and they care and they understand it.

Speaker 2 1:25:25

I agree with that, except I'll add this caveat is that there is a catechesis in proper liturgy, right. So I don't think it would be a good thing for the Novus Ordo to thrive the way it is in its current state. So if you're having the unicorn, that's one thing, but in its current state, with the altar, girls and all that stuff, I do think that there's a subtle catechesis that happens there, even if you have the most orthodox homily. That has a subtle effect on the children that are attending those masses, on the average parishioner that's attending those that aren't doing what we're doing. Look, you're on fire for your faith, you're digging in, you're going back, you're reading books. That is a beautiful thing, but that's just not the average person's experience, and the average person's experience of Catholicism is their local liturgy, and that's just the fact of the matter.

Speaker 3 1:26:18

I also think once you have children and see how they respond to the two forms, I think you get this instinctual understanding of why there is such a difference in retention rate. Yeah, my children seem to soak, you know, soak up the tlm and I, I mean, I believe that.

Speaker 4 1:26:38

But the thing is like I, there is obviously an element that just regards the cosmic mystery, so much in the tridentine form, like it's obviously there. I don't think that that has to be absent for the nova sordo, I don't think that for many, I don't think that it's necessarily unicorn. But also, what I'll say is, I do have faith at the end of the day. I think we all agree the pontiff cannot.

Speaker 2 1:26:57

Yeah, no, no, no. None of us are set of a contest here. None of us are anywhere near that. No, no, no.

Speaker 4 1:27:03

I'm not accusing anybody of even saying that.

Speaker 2 1:27:05

Yeah, no, none of us are. I would never even. Yeah, whatever, it's not at all. I'm talking about the experiential level of Catholicism and just how the faith is being passed on. And look, I'll also say this, the reason they wanted to restrict the Latin mass because I hear it all the time it's like, oh, you know, the Latin mass, it's only 1% of Catholics, right I think. It's the time it's like, oh, you know, the Latin mass, it's only 1% of Catholics, right? I don't, I think it's more than 1%, um, and also, if it was really only 1% and we're so insignificant, they wouldn't care about restricting it. They just go. Who cares? It's 1%, they're not even you know they're not.

Speaker 2 1:27:44

But the problem is they do see that there is this fervor for this more traditional faith, and I think the people that are in are still very connected to the council and they see the Latin mass itself as a repudiation of the council.

Speaker 2 1:28:05

They see the Latin mass as a repudiation of the council.

Speaker 2 1:28:08

And then you're talking about people who are very committed ideologically to what went on at that council and the things that happened after, the reforms that that happened after, and I don't think they're willing to admit, man, we messed up, like it's very difficult for people to actually see their own mistakes and come out and say, okay, we, we made a mistake here. But I do think that as time goes on and people are less ideologically connected to that council, some reforms are going to be made and there's going to be a lot of things that are changed and things will lean more traditional, even if the Novus Ordo stays. I think the Novus Ordo will not stay in its current form. I think it will definitely. I think we'll definitely see a return to all the rail, even though you see this hard push right now by a lot of the diets, by a lot of the bishops trying to say we're getting rid of altar rails, we're not allowing kneeling for communion, all those things. That is the last-ditch efforts of a dying revolution, in my opinion.

Speaker 3 1:29:02

While the demographic decline may accelerate due to the boomers dying off. The boomer bishops are going to die off too.

Speaker 2 1:29:10

They are no matter what, and you're going to get and look, you'll hear it all the time like the seminaries are way more you know orthodox traditional things like that. Like those guys. I agree, yeah, but eventually that's going to come up and become a factor and people won't be ideologically connected to the council anymore. It'll be this thing in the past and it's like okay, council anymore.

Speaker 1 1:29:31

It'll be this thing in the past and it's like okay, we got to deal with the actual problems we're facing.

Speaker 4 1:29:34

So and that's what I think we're gonna get to sorry yeah, please, ryan.

Speaker 1 1:29:36

That that was just the end of my tweet, was kind of the. The silver lining there was that the dam that hasn't broken is the conservative seminaries. I mean, like I forget what podcast I was or a youtube channel I was watching, but like, look, when the bishop bans these teal on in the diocese, according to this guest and I apologize, I can't remember his name they still happen. Underground Seminarians are being banned from learning the Latin Mass it's on YouTube Mass of the Ages. Put out an instructional guide and the seminarians are learning it. They're praying the hours in secret. This is going to explode above ground eventually. Um, and a lot of people think the novus ordo will never be eclipsed by traditional parishes if the numbers hold, and of course that's absurd because they never hold. But if these current numbers hold I came out with roughly by the year, uh, 2100, the, if traditionist custodians are repealed and we kind of have a free-for-all, the traditional parishes will eclipse the Noah's order parishes by 2100?, 2100.

Speaker 2 1:30:42

Yeah, we're not going to make it that long.

Speaker 1 1:30:44

No, but we're traditional. We believe in leaving something for our kids and our grandkids.

Speaker 2 1:30:50

We're going to see the Jewish Messiah before then.

Speaker 1 1:30:53

Oh yeah, yeah, you're on that whole like end of the world 21, I mean I'm taking it.

Speaker 2 1:30:58

I just had to throw it in there it's also gonna watch it.

Speaker 3 1:31:01

Yeah, like four more years okay. 2100, okay fine 2100.

Speaker 4 1:31:05

Uh, you know, everybody will be. Strickland will be pope, bishop strickland. Be Pope 2100.

Speaker 2 1:31:11

Bishop Strickland, be Pope 2100, boy. Okay.

Speaker 4 1:31:16

So, like in all seriousness, like at the end of the day, that authenticity is there and I think, like we both correct me if I'm wrong have admired deeply, especially as then Cardinal Ratzinger, then Pope Benedict, sort of what he believed in regards to comfort in Latin and vernacular and sort of understanding and appreciating both and taking the best. And as we I don't want to get too optimistic here as we go forward, as we get priests who are moved from the spirit of the council, where and I don't think this is a fault of the council, let's be real here it was a rough time for confession, it was, it was a rough time right you will get priests who can actually appreciate tradition while looking at the council, looking at the new form, and they can be comfortable in both and benedict's vision might be realized in a way before had not.

Speaker 2 1:32:03

I'm not, I'm not making predictions, but no, I I look, I, I have to say, like I love benedict, I, I grew up under benedict. Like I'm, I'm a lifelong catholic, right. So, like I'm, I'm a jp2 catholic, I'm a benedict catholic, but I, I, I and I, and I did like, when you read some more of them, it's a beautiful thing, but I don't, I don't know, man, I don't, I don't know if it's, I don't know if realizing benedict's vision is going to be the answer to this. I think it's, I think it's way. I think the problem is way deeper than that and I think that I think there'll be another revolution, like there was in the 60s, but in the opposite direction. I just just do and I don't know why so many young Catholics are against that Like they did it to the generation in the 60s, they had a revolution and they pushed that revolution on the church and that revolution came to fruition in the council and everything after the council.

Speaker 2 1:33:06

It's like, why can't the young generation that's coming up now do the same thing, but in reverse, and say no, no, we want, we want our inheritance back, like you guys tried to take things from us that should never have been taken from us. I can understand we're not talking about the documents of the council, even, whatever. I don't want to debate that. I'm talking about, like, the praxis of we had and the like everything was just overturned, that I think we've starved three generations at this point of the inheritance that they were owed by their forefathers. So I hope that. I hope that the younger generation comes up and says, hey, we want some of this stuff back. Yeah, it's not just the mass, I mean.

Speaker 1 1:33:52

I recently discovered what up and says, hey, we want some of this stuff back. Yeah, it's not just the Mass, I mean, I recently discovered what Ember Days Ember Days like right off the bat.

Speaker 3 1:33:59

Rogation Days.

Speaker 2 1:34:01

Rogation Days, ember Days, all these things, these beautiful things that I just learned about in the past five years, seven years, st Martin's, Lent.

Speaker 3 1:34:08

Yeah, Really really.

Speaker 2 1:34:18

These are really genuinely beneficial things to the catholic faithful, like you we were. We were just told these things were just superstitious. You don't need to worry about all that and this outpouring of mercy to the point where people no longer like had had a had a deep connection to their catholic identity anymore. I think a lot of that stuff is the reason people lost their deep connection to their catholic identity and I think we have to reclaim that. And I don't think there's any. I don't think it's, I don't think it's um, because you, I, I think a lot of people view trads like a lot of like your, your typical catholic novus ordo going cat, and I hate even I don't want that to be a pejorative, I'm just your average Catholic when they see trads, they think these trads are mean and they think they're better than the other Catholics.

Speaker 2 1:34:59

And it's not that I think they see something that was beautiful that they're just learning about and they're like, hey, why the heck was that taken from me? Like let's bring that thing back. And they're doing their best to kind of put some of the puzzle pieces back together, because even the trads aren't living what a traditional lifestyle was back before, you know, before all the changes, it's finding things that benefit us and our family and we're like, hey, let me put this piece back in, hey, let's add this tradition and let's do this, and it's the best we could do piecemeal Right, because all the infrastructure and the culture's kind of been ripped out and so we're just trying to put it back together.

Speaker 1 1:35:36

um, I mean, you know, a lot of a lot of people think that, like most traditionalists want to ban the novus ordo. Um, I'm been very pessimistic on it, but I I wouldn't even take that stance. Like, let's be honest, a lot of us will sometimes claim, you know, in a negative sense, oh, it's the master, the mass for the boomers. Well, quite honestly, at this point, fine, I mean, it's not like they're going anywhere. You know, they're not apostatizing or leading the faith. If a boomer attends the Novus Ordo, he or she is probably staying, but they got their mass and so why can't the young people now have their mass?

Speaker 3 1:36:10

You know that's a, really that's a fair question.

Speaker 1 1:36:27

That's a really good. That's a fair question. That's a fair question to ask. And one other plug I'll make is for the traditional rite of confession.

Speaker 1 1:36:30

Like Anthony and Rob talk a lot, you guys like, honestly, I think are the only ones who kind of talk about lust with young men and how you got to say like you are fighting with one hand tied behind your back if you're going to the new rite of confession. I actually tracked my own statistics, which is really nerdy, but I found a 200% increase 200% increase in the gaps between confessions when I started attending the old rite. There's an exorcism attached to that and you're just better protected for longer you have more attached to that. You're just better protected for longer you have more grace through that. I think it can be really detrimental, especially to young men, if they're struggling with certain things and they're immediately attacked as they step out of the confessional booth. The demonic is just attacking again and you're just in this slugout war and you're fighting with one iron time tied behind your back. I think if you, if you have the opportunity to get to an older eddie confession, try to go as much as possible.

Speaker 4 1:37:22

It's immensely powerful see, you put me in an impossible spot, because now you're making me attack a lot of things that to me sound really good. I want to actually expand upon something you said, where it's like you're talking about reclaiming the inheritance, it's like we I don't buy, like what's the shining city in the hill? It's not america, it's the church, but america has had this opportunity to be the treasury of the church. I mean, when europe failed, america was thriving, but at the end of the day, this isn't going to be purely. Obviously, you know, lex, um Lex.

Speaker 4 1:37:58

Lex, lex Lex but at the end of the day, this has to be in the truest sense, from top down. Like this is not merely about the liturgy, it's so much bigger, and that's what I am actually very passionate about. If Jesus Christ is not reigning in the hearts, souls and minds of every man, woman and child, and I, I don't think, obviously. I think that the importance of mass and church and people's lives matters a lot. If people are just kowtowing to secular pressures that have existed since the enlightenment and since, as I think ryan aptly pointed out, french revolution, like we are going to have a country that is utterly bereft of everything good.

Speaker 2 1:38:36

Yeah, we're going to world, a world bereft of it. And yeah, no, look it's. It's like never been a more important time to be a saint, but in some ways, it's never been an easier time, because if you just live out your vocation the way you're supposed to you, you are doing something heroic. Now, yes, if you just live out your vocation and you are attending mass and you are trying to be the best Catholic you can, it is a heroic thing to do in the modern world.

Speaker 4 1:39:05

Michael JC Dew, the answer to your question is yes. Yes, I would, but I think at the end of the day, we have hope too. At the end of the day, like we have, we have hope too. It's at the end of the day. Um, look, if my people, whom are called by my name, should humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear their prayers and I will heal their land. I will hear their prayers and I will heal their land. We have hope. We need to be the hope we work.

Speaker 4 1:39:32

The way you worship is incredibly important, but, as you've said, the new mass is valid. The body of Christ extends beyond an expression of the form you do. It's taking what you get in worship, which is secondary to nothing. And then you go out there and you actually live it out and you build the kingdom and you live out the sermon on the mount and the biggest part of the church is worship. And then what you do with that worship and you are enlivened in Christ until your will becomes like that of God and you build the kingdom of God on earth. That's what we need to focus on. I think that extends. That's not secondary to liturgy, but in terms of what we're failing to do. I think that at this point in time, that is primary in where we are failing.

Speaker 3 1:40:13

Would it be fair the? Ends of worship, though, aren't for us, they're for God.

Speaker 4 1:40:18

No, I agree wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly, but that's not what I was trying to get at all.

Speaker 1 1:40:22

Would it be fair? If I asked someone, I've been properly catechized and I simply find that the traditional Latin mass better mirrors what I learned in catechesis than the new mass does, Then I think I should have every right to then go to the traditional Latin mass.

Speaker 2 1:40:42

I don't think he would argue against that.

Speaker 4 1:40:44

No, he wouldn't argue, you should have every right.

Speaker 2 1:40:47

Look, and I and I and I think even this conversation like, like having a conversation where there's clearly like, a difference of opinion but nobody's like, everybody loves one another, everything's fine, right, like nobody. There's nobody beefing on here or anything, it's just you can have the, and that's the other thing. I think we have to learn that, um, having a difference of opinion does not mean dislike, and that's that's one thing I've noticed happening an awful lot lately. It's like if you, if you say something that somebody disagrees with it, you become their enemy all of a sudden, especially when you're not talking about doctrine and dogma and things like that. You got to be able to have conversations about this stuff and and it like for me to see younger guys like you guys on fire for your faith and so passionate about this stuff.

Speaker 2 1:41:33

It's a hopeful thing in itself, like, even forget the demographics and stuff it's that god is still changing hearts and minds. Despite this corrupt culture that we all live in and not some cases, not even in like, in spite of the fact that all these things are happening, god is still moving men's hearts and bringing them into the church and bringing them to the faith. It's an amazing thing, um, and you know the the arguments about liturgy like the these, these debates about liturgy should be done in charity, the way we did tonight. And it's, it's it. I'm still very hopeful about the church. I don't whether whether we do see some cliffs on the horizon and things shifting and changing. I just know God's still moving amongst his people.

Speaker 3 1:42:16

This is Anthony right now.

Speaker 2 1:42:19

All are welcome. All are welcome.

Speaker 4 1:42:25

All are welcome.

Speaker 1 1:42:29

Such a diplomat.

Speaker 2 1:42:36

Rob went old school Holding the phone into the mic.

Speaker 3 1:42:39

I'm holding.

Speaker 2 1:42:39

Anthony.

Speaker 1 1:42:40

I'm really glad that I've never heard that before.

Speaker 2 1:42:45

Lucky we might have to do a. Novus Ordo bangers episode one night. We hope it's not even close yet. The motor's still not in.

Speaker 4 1:42:55

I'm not a'm not a big modern. I think I think the modern music we can agree it's in it. Look at the end of the day my take on this real quick. This is kind of external to what we're talking about at the end of the day. Like I think that if you're just gonna have to listen to music all the time, you're better off listening to a lot of worship not contemporary christian necessarily, but a lot of worship music than you are listening to like motley crew. But it does not belong in the mass, it's it?

Speaker 2 1:43:19

no, yeah, yeah, I think, look, I that's the thing. I think a lot of um, even the, even the young novus ordo attending, uh, catholics, I see, on fire for their faith, they want more traditional stuff. They want gregorian chant at faith. They want more traditional stuff, they want Gregorian chant at their mass. They want an altar rail at their mass. So in that respect you guys are trads. You don't want the wacky clown mass, you want the unicorn Novus Ordo. If you can find it, and if you had a Latin mass that was around the block, you'd probably attend that. And if you had a Latin mass that was around the block, you'd probably attend that. So that, so, look you, you, it's not, it's not anybody's fault that the bishops implemented this thing, it's not, it's just what we have. So, uh, I'm going to agree.

Speaker 2 1:44:03

His LARPers are bad, I'm going to leave you guys with some closing thoughts and uh, and closing thoughts and uh, and rob and I we were going to do local site, but this went very long, so we're not going to do locals tonight, but maybe we'll do something else over the weekend or something. We'll figure it out, me and rob will figure that out. Um, but yeah, if you guys have any closing thoughts, I mean, I think there's a really really interesting conversation. If you guys stop playing with your calculators, all right, who's you?

Speaker 4 1:44:33

you go first, and then we'll let ryan do the give his closing statement I think we're only here because we both love the truth and this is obviously, like, not necessarily the most pressing truth there is. I mean, we live in a world where, like you've said, people don't believe, and this is true across denominations. They they bury their heads in the sand. They don't. It's not even that they don't engage with religion, it's that they judge, they deem god an unrighteous judge because he's mean.

Speaker 4 1:45:01

And if that is the culture that we live in, then frankly, I think I'm not. Again, I want to be careful because I've seen people in the comments. I'm not saying liturgy is secondary, it's not, but we have the valid form like we have. There's not like mass. Obviously there's abuses, but there's not mass error. We have the valid form Like we have. There's not like mass. Obviously there's abuses, but there's not mass error there, at the end of the day.

Speaker 4 1:45:16

Like we need to be a pillar of truth, not only in the practices of the church, the strongest means of grace. We also need to be pillars in going out there and in building the kingdom and in evangelizing and teaching people the truth and it might be truths they don't want to hear. But I think that me and Ryan both love the truth. I think that me and Ryan both have this sort of zeal for the gospel and I think that we're coming at this from a good angle. We might have slight differences, slight different, you know, different scruples on whatever, but it all comes down to this we have unity in the spirit and in unity, truth, and truth builds unity, and we love the kingdom of God. We're servants of the kingdom of God, so anyways that's all I got to say.

Speaker 1 1:46:06

Well, thanks, hoosier. I just wanted to say um, before this even started, I said to myself I think I said to Rob too like maybe I didn't, but I was thinking. I said to myself, I think I said to Rob too, like maybe I didn't, but I was thinking. I said, man, I got to respect Hoosier for coming on here. Three I mean not three against one, but you knew we're avoiding. Babylon's tone was you knew my position, um, and you were coming at it with, in my opinion, not a lot of ammo. Um, you took the hardest road, so I've got to say I respect you for that.

Speaker 1 1:46:38

What I'll say is I know a lot of people who attend the standard Mass right now, the Novus Ordo but they start asking questions. They're so curious and they want to know about Latin Mass. I go on occasion to a Latinin novus ordo um right in downtown nashville. So you've got a ton of like hungover tourists trying to figure out their um, how to get their obligation, and you can tell because they come in in shorts and flip-flops oh yeah, watching, and they don't even like look it up. So watching them go from the first five minutes in utter horror to like what did I get myself into? To at the end of the mess. Particularly the men are just I don't know what the word is to describe them, but they are so thrilled and you can tell they're going to go home and Google where they can find that back home.

Speaker 1 1:47:32

I think it's very healthy to call out problems in the church. We shouldn't downplay it. We should be watchful, as the Desert Fathers said. We should be watchful both in our own lives and with the church, and I'd rather be a little over-pessimistic so we can start introducing people to more reverent liturgy, whether it be a Latin Novus Ordo, the traditional Latin Mass, because I just see it over and over again. I have Protestant relatives, I have Jewish relatives who come to the Latin Mass and they're just blown away by it.

Speaker 2 1:48:03

In itself, it's an evangelistic tool. When people see it, they're like what the heck is this? It's so alien to anything they've ever experienced. That's what I've.

Speaker 1 1:48:14

I've experienced at least. So anyways, I appreciate everyone for hosting this and Hoosier kudos to you. Man Like this was a tough one yeah.

Speaker 4 1:48:21

God bless, yeah, yeah For the record in 10 years.

Speaker 3 1:48:24

we're we're coming back to this to see who was right and we'll declare the winner.

Speaker 4 1:48:30

Perfect, perfect. Okay, I'll be there.

Speaker 2 1:48:32

The I'm like I said, I'm actually very happy to see any young guys that care this much about the church itself. So, look, I don't think this was like a fundamental disagreement about anything. It was more just a I I. I think Hoosier kind of looked at, ryan's view is pessimistic. But I do think Ryan's view is optimistic, depending on how you're looking at it, because I I clearly like have I side more with Ryan's opinion that I do think the future is tradition. I don't know how long it's going to take to get there.

Speaker 2 1:49:04

I don't, you know, I didn't crunch numbers like you guys, but I just see it on on the ground and I, I see, I see that people are drawn more to the traditional form of catholicism and and whether that's a reverend novus ordo or it's a latin mass, I think that is like all the, all the young people that are into catholicism now, even all the, all the uh influencers and stuff like that. They all want reverence, everybody. I don't know, I don't know anybody's still fighting for the, the wacky stuff in the liturgy that's going on in the Novus Ordo. Mike Lewis, yeah, but those guys are, you know. So I'm glad you both came on, man. This was an interesting conversation. Do you guys have anything to promote?

Speaker 1 1:49:48

No, I don't have a channel.

Speaker 2 1:49:52

Twitter handles, or it's just at Hoosier.

Speaker 4 1:49:56

At Hoosier underscore EC.

Speaker 1 1:50:00

And Ryan, I don't even know what mine is. It's like at LPH Hitney. I don't know what I can. It is Just look up Taylor Manon if you want to follow it. But yeah, I don't have anything.

Speaker 2 1:50:11

Throw these guys a Twitter follow.

Speaker 4 1:50:15

Gigi said one thing where he's like you know new people be careful about. I really don't. I have a good mind for understanding a lot of things. I don't wade into my own opinions or my own interpretations. I try to. I where I can decipher things, I might state them. I don't try to go beyond and come up with theories in that regard like when do you get most of your opinions on the council from?

Speaker 2 1:50:35

Like, what, what, what apologists are you listening to about the council? That I was curious about. Like are you, are you listening to guys like Scott Hahn, or who are you checking out?

Speaker 4 1:50:44

I've watched like one Joe Hashmire video. Like I'm not, I kind of came up with this on my own.

Speaker 1 1:50:51

It's a lot of osmosis. I actually have a very good friend of mine who is asking about the council and it's like, oh, I have so many answers but I don't know as much as I should. I mean, the council is longer than the New Testament.

Speaker 2 1:51:07

Yeah Well, no, Hoosier, I'm saying, like, when you say, like the spirit of the council and stuff like that, where are you hearing that from? Are you hearing that from Benedict's writings? Where are you like because these are very specific phrases, that you're that? You're saying that you know that you don't come up with something like that on your own. You read that somewhere.

Speaker 4 1:51:24

you know, like, that's what I'm just curious, obviously, to form opinions like I have to engage with realist what's being said on both ends, with realism what's being said on both ends. Right, that's just the fact, right. So I, I listen to them and a lot of where I hear spirit of vatican too is like just on social media and it's from, yeah, their writings, absolutely, um. And then I just expand upon that. But I don't really try to cut my own cloth, I just try to understand what the numbers would tell me and then also understand that I think that secularism and modernism pre date and we give ourselves too much credit if we make it seem like the councils.

Speaker 2 1:51:58

Oh no, secularism and modernism Very definitely predate the council. I mean it's yeah. I mean my opinions have changed on this over. So my, my, my opinion is just understanding humanity, like human humans and ritual, by even looking at ancient civilizations and how important ritual was to them and how important ritual is to passing on the thing to the next generation, and that's kind of like. Strangely, my opinion on the liturgy changed by watching freaking the. What was that show on Netflix? Rob, the Ancient Civilization show.

Speaker 4 1:52:39

I gotta clarify I definitely read like the Doctors and the Magisterium, like I wasn't just coming up with stuff on my own.

Speaker 3 1:52:45

No, no, no. Which is exactly what Anthony did.

Speaker 2 1:52:47

My opinion on how important liturgy itself is was from watching that freaking guy doing the.

Speaker 3 1:52:55

Graham.

Speaker 2 1:52:55

Hitchcock, graham Hitchcock's thing. So like seeing ancient civilizations and these giant monoliths and the myths that surrounded these things and the religions that they passed on, I was like it started making me think deeper about ritual and how important it is to pass on, like the, the memory of your people to the next generation, and it has so much to do with ritual, and that's kind of what made me change my opinion on the Latin mass and the Nova sort. I wasn't listening to Taylor Marshall, it wasn't anything like that. It wasn't even going to the Latin mass. Well, it definitely was going to the Latin mass, but it was more understanding ancient civilizations. That made me go, wow, you can't just uproot this ritual from people and think there's not going to be these massive consequences to it.

Speaker 2 1:53:42

So but, yeah, all right, it was very nice meeting both of you. Man, I'm very happy to see this was a cordial conversation. Yeah, yeah, it was cordial conversation. Yeah, um, yeah, it was it. It was a good combo. I think anybody that stuck stuck around until we got past that first half hour of uh, just you know, whatever, I think that you guys got to enjoy a really good show. So, absolutely, um, yeah, maybe we'll have you guys uh, back for a local segment or something, just to just to get to know you guys a little more personally or something.

Speaker 3 1:54:08

So um, I have to dig into that jewish relatives comment there. Uh, ryan my analyst.

Speaker 4 1:54:17

I'm a straight, I'm a straight, I'm a straight paise on, but also like okay, I I'm not just coming with my own opinions like I I have a mind.

Speaker 2 1:54:23

No, I don't think you are. I don't think you can definitely read into it. Yeah, I was asking because I think where, where we pick things up, you kind of can, it's just look, dude, I grew up listening to the regular main guys that were presenting this stuff, and it was always like the Scott Hans and like Brant Petrie and those guys, and they would always talk about the council in a way where they were saying, like you know, the council itself was perfect and then the spirit of the council came out and it was all stuff they were getting from benedict, and so I was just curious to know where you were, where you were getting most of your catechesis on the council itself from, that's all it wasn't.

Speaker 4 1:55:04

It wasn't a judgment. I read a lot of benedict before this.

Speaker 1 1:55:07

We'll say that yeah, anthony, if you want a really good channel on particularly the liturgical movement. Historia Ecclesia, historia Ecclesia.

Speaker 3 1:55:18

Um very small.

Speaker 1 1:55:21

Sorry, um very small channel, but the guy does like hour long lectures in um. I think it's like an 18 part series, utterly fascinating Um and how how some of the modernist stuff crept into the council and where it originated from which, not shockingly, is the French revolution.

Speaker 2 1:55:42

Yeah no, I'm not surprised by that at all, actually, so I just subscribed to him. I'll check out some of the videos tomorrow. It's good, all right guys. This was fun. Rob's going to take us out in a second. We will be back tuesday. We were supposed to have charles frown on. He's not gonna make it tuesday. I think we have taylor is coming on thursday, you know, uh, and then so I don't know.

Speaker 3 1:56:03

We'll see what we're doing for tuesday and a month. The following monday there might be an entirely new show on the channel oh really, you guys are doing that we Depends on if I have a child being born that day or not.

Speaker 2 1:56:16

At some point. Rob's wife is going to have a kid and I'm going to have to do a shotgun.

Speaker 3 1:56:21

Baptism Anthony sent me the camera and the microphone for the on the street interviews for the live birth show.

Speaker 1 1:56:26

We'll be all set.

Speaker 2 1:56:29

I'll be flying out to Minnesota and I'm going to get to hang with Rob in person. Rob's wife Hope and my wife Nicole will finally get to meet. So all right, we'll take this out. We'll see you guys on Tuesday, all right, thanks guys.