If one takes the position that the Second Vatican Council was a revolution in the Church, several questions naturally follow: How fares the revolution? Is it succeeding? Are there some who are resisting? Sixty years later, have things changed? Who is winning this war?
In 1970, the answer to that question would have left a devout Catholic feeling wholly discouraged. The entire Church changed overnight, with almost every pre-conciliar practice having been swept away. Only a few pockets of resistance held out — nothing that a “conciliar revolutionary” would have feared, though. Nearly the entire hierarchy went along with the radical and inexhaustible number of “reforms” ushered in at the time.
Fortunately, those “pockets of resistance” did not remain small forever. Take Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre’s Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), which started off with a handful of young men and a single seminary in Écône, Switzerland. His Excellency had minimal resources and practically no institutional support.
Rome was almost immediately hostile to Lefebvre’s efforts. In 1974, two clergy were sent to conduct an apostolic visitation of his seminary. This resulted in him being suspended a divinis by Paul VI two years later.
By the grace of God, the SSPX has grown to more than 730 priests, 145 brothers, two bishops (though four more will be consecrated on July 1), five seminaries, and several male and women religious orders. It is believed that over 600,000 Catholics attend the Society’s more than 700 Mass centers, which are now located on every continent.
The SSPX was followed, and in some cases paralleled, by groups such as the CMRI, the Fraternal Society of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King, diocesan Latin Mass communities, and other independent associations of priests and religious.
Available records indicate there are over 2,100 Latin Mass locations across the world. This figure undoubtedly fails to account for many underground and unregistered groups that are just as worthy of consideration but unfortunately cannot be easily tracked.
If these 2,100 locations are used as a low-end baseline, it can reasonably be assumed that at least one million lay Catholics are attending the Latin Mass globally. A high-end estimate of five million could be used if one includes those who assist at these liturgies but not with strict regularity.
The Dispatch
To put this in perspective, the number of Traditional Catholics — broadly understood — may well exceed the current amount of practicing Mormons. 1 This is truly impressive given that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, started his sect in the early 1800s.
The current growth rate of Latin Mass Catholics matches or exceeds the rate of the Church in the early first century, depending on the estimates one uses. This means that despite the “reset” that occurred after Vatican II, a small remnant of faithful clergy and laity have been able to rebuild at a similar, if not greater, rate than that of the apostles. Granted, the faith had not yet been preached to the world at that time and the population back then was not as large as it is today, but this is notable nonetheless.
By contrast, the post-conciliar Church is in free fall. The Novus Ordo retention rate is around 30 percent at the most compared to higher than 75 percent for SSPX communities. 2 In the US alone, some three thousand diocesan parishes have closed since Vatican II. Two thousand more are likely to be shuttered over the next fifteen years as baby boomers pass away.
While Catholics who attend the Latin Mass comprise only one to two percent of Catholics worldwide, their numbers continue to grow. As such, they increasingly carry more weight, especially because they attend Mass with higher frequency. The Novus Ordo can only boast of roughly 20 percent weekly attendance. 3 Put another way, the number of Catholics who attend the Latin Mass are on the rise while the Novus Ordo is in decline.
In the United States, virtually every parish that has closed since Vatican II was home to the new Mass. One can confidently say that had the post-Vatican II practices been implemented in the early Church, Catholicism would have died out in the first two centuries.
At the end of the day, Tradition is going to win. The victory may not be as instant as many would like it to be, but this is because it takes time to start over from scratch. Those who ridicule Traditionalists for being small relative to the number of practicing Novus Ordo Catholics worldwide fail to understand that the statistics are not on their side. Traditional-minded, Latin Mass communities have only grown since the 1970s. Diocesan churches have consistently declined over that 56-year period. It is only a matter of time before one overtakes the other.
- While identification with Mormonism is now a reported 17 million members, only an estimated 30-40 percent (5-6.8 million) actively participate and the BYU Research Center reports that only 22 percent remain active throughout their entire lives. ↩︎
- Calculated by comparing weekly mass attendance rates of those raised by families who also attended weekly to observe retention rate. Meaning the real retention rate among merely baptized Catholics is much lower. ↩︎
- Some survey data shows numbers as low as 13 percent with highs around 23 percent, but I opted for a more modest estimate of 20 percent to square the discrepancies. ↩︎
