My thanks to Dennis Martin for an answer whose thoroughness is only exceeded
by its thoughtfulness.
>Actually the numbers of priests and laity enthused about the Latin
Mass (both the revised post-Vatican II version and the Tridentine rite)
is growing and growing quite rapidly.
The intention of my strangled and convoluted syntax was to the effect
that it was the number of the faithful in general--not the Latin enthusiasts
among them--which was decreasing in number:
>Obviously a certain percentage--perhaps a substantial minority--of the
(decreasing in number, btw) faithful--lay and clergy--feel strongly
enough about it to defy their shepards and attend/support/long for such
services.
(Proper reading of Crocketteze requires considerable training and
commitment.)
This firmly-held, uninformed opinion was based on 20 years, on and off,
of art historical church-hopping in France, where my experience was that 90%
of village churches were open during the day and possessed of Sunday services
in 1968, while the reverse was true in 1988, with virtually all smaller
parishes either without regular Sunday services or one Sunday in three or four
being serviced, typically by an aging and
more-than-somewhat overworked priest.
To expand on what I mentioned earlier re the reason for my Bréthencourt
pilgrimage, on several occasions I recall finding an interesting document or
two in the archives and going to the church only to find that, rather than
being simply locked, it was totally abandoned--closed up shop for good after
800 documentable years.
Not a happy sign.
>From what you say the situation is changing, and due perhaps in no small
measure to the fervor generated by being deprived of a beloved form of
worship.
Perhaps the Lord is working in Mysterious Ways again--force of habit, I
suppose.
>The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter and several other new religious orders
devoted to the Tridentine rite have seminaries bulging at the seams.
Which makes Rubén Peretó Rivas' report of the situation in Argentina(?) all
the more puzzling, and still nagging, despite your convincing account of the
*original* reasons for the introduction of vernacularization.
Why, on the one hand, continue to drive people away with a liturgy which many
(those voting with their feet)--though certainly not all--find, in your happy
phraseology, "crypto-Pelagian [which certainly sounds worse than it is, I
hope] and terribly banal," and "banal, sloppy, in bad taste", and, on the
other, *actively* "persecute" those who wish for something better--especially
when that "something" was quite good enough for the previous 300 odd years in
it's ultimate incarnation and the previous 1500+ in its radix?
Seems, if not counter productive, somewhat nose-cutting despite face-saving.
And, if I read your account correctly, *without* a theological/doctrinal
basis.
>I don't think it had much to do with theology at all.
Thanks again, Dennis Martin, for an informed response.
Best to all from here,
Christopher
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