Religion for Adults

From Yahoo News:

Pope considers return to Latin mass

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
Sat May 26, 4:17 PM ET

It was one of the most radical reforms to emerge from the Second Vatican Council. The Mass, root of Roman Catholic worship, would be celebrated in the local language and not in Latin.

Now, little more than a generation later, Pope Benedict XVI is poised to revive the 16th-century Tridentine Mass...

A Vatican official, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, confirmed earlier this month that Benedict would soon relax the restrictions on celebrating the Tridentine Mass because of a "new and renewed interest" in the celebration — especially among younger Catholics.

After many years of appalling "innovations," the RC Church, ironically under the guidance of of one of the oldest Popes in years, has recognized instead of attracting young people she has been repelling them with many of the post-Vatican II changes. The return to Latin worship along with ad orientem celebration, chant and other traditions has been noised about for some time now but now seems ever more likely. I think it's money in the bank as the old and beautiful forms of worship return and become more widespread, the RC Church in America will see her numbers swell, with young people who crave the visual and aural links to the past in a two-thousand year old institution as well her older lapsed members who saw no good reason for those links to be jettisoned and stopped attending Mass because they were.

Another rich potential source for new Roman worshippers may be Anglo-Catholics, who for years have longed for a church that treats them like adults and instead are treated to pandering drivel like this from their Presiding Bishop:

“We are about embracing the world and saying ‘y’all come,’ ” she added. She encouraged church members “to listen to people who are hungry.”

Evangelism means many things in words and music, observing that it is difficult to attract young people to Episcopal churches when “you speak in Victorian (sic) English.” She cited a successful youth program in one metropolitan area that attracts young people with hip-hop.

Someone ought to inform Ms. Schori that hip-hop sales are off substantially from last year, that's it's on the way out (with a rather nice parallel there), but it hardly matters. I wonder how many Anglo-Catholics, after years of watching our church's doctrine assaulted from the left, via the revisionists, and her liturgy from both left and right (i.e. those who claim "orthodoxy" yet have no problem with women "priests," "praise music," dumbed-down English and just plain noise) will view this development from Rome as the beckoning to leave behind the confusion and decay and come back into the comfortable enfold of Holy Mother Church. If the Catholic Church returns to worship that emphasizes traditional liturgy and music, increasing numbers of Anglo-Catholic conservatives will see little advantage to casting their lot with the thumb sucking graybeards that comprise much of the Episcopal Church these days, instead preferring the blessed company of all faithful people, even young ones, who act and worship God like adults.