Chapter 8: By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

Chapter 8 of Dr Edward Schaeffer's new book, A Simple Man’s Case for Tradition, written for the average Catholic in the pew, not a professional "liturgist".

From One Peter Five

By Edward Schaeffer, PhD

Editor’s note: we continue our weekly serialisation of Dr. Edward Schaefer’s new book A Simple Man’s Case for Tradition. This book is an excellent introduction to Traditionalism and provides an easy way for Trads to introduce the movement to fellow Catholics who are seeking deeper answers to today’s questions. Proceeds from the book sale also help promote the Collegium Sanctorum Angelorum, one of only two traditional Catholic colleges in the United States.

Read the Introduction
Read Chapter 1: Equally Valid and Holy
Read Chapter 2: the New Mass
Read Chapter 3: Latin

Read Chapter 4: Practice and Belief

Read Chapter 5: One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic

Read Chapter 6: Modernism

Read Chapter 7: Tradition and the Family

The Fruits of the Last Sixty Years (1960-2020)

In the fall of 2019, I was invited to a seminary to speak to the seminarians about music in the Church.  While there, it became apparent to me that these young men were being prepared to minister in a declining church.  About this same time, there was a meeting of bishops from North and Central America held in Orlando.  The topic of the meeting was how to manage the decline in the Church’s membership.  The diocese of Pittsburgh was used as a model.  It had reduced parishes under one bishop from about 230 to 188 and was now in the process of reducing parishes to about 45.[1]  In the fall of 2023, a colleague of mine attended a diaconal retreat in Baltimore.  At this retreat one of the auxiliary bishops commented that by 2027 there would be no parishes in Baltimore city proper.  It is no secret to anyone that the Catholic Church is in a state of decline.

Too, the decline is not small.  It is huge.  A few statistics will demonstrate:

	1958	1965	2002[2]	2023[3]	Decrease from 1965 (1958) – 2023
Diocesan Priests		58,000	45,000	24,219 (over 50% are over 70)	-58%
Seminaries		600	200	65	-89%
Sisters		180,000	75,000	36,513 (Average age is 68)	-80%
Hospitals	939			544	-42%
Catholic High Schools		700,000 students	386,000 students	533,131	-24%
Parochial Schools		4,500,000 students	2,000,000 students	1,096,545 1,184,185 (inc. private schools)	-76% -74%
Combined Students		5,200,000	2,386,000	1,629,676 1,717,316 (inc. private schools)	-79% -67%
Converts (adult baptism)	140,414		79,892	27,778	-80%

This data is demonstrative, not exhaustive.  These data points were selected because of the possibility of comparing them with similar data for the years preceding Vatican Council II.  However, regardless of what statistical group is selected, by any gauge that the Church uses to measure her health, the decline since the mid-1960s has been dramatic.

The Fruits of the Previous Twenty Years (1939-1958)

However, it wasn’t always like this.  Compare the data in the above table to statistics for the same data points for the United States during the reign of Pope Pius XII, who reigned from 1939 to 1958:

	1939	1958	Increase
Diocesan Priests	33,540	50,813	51.5%
Seminaries	209	516	246%
Catholic Educational Institutions (High Schools and Grade Schools)	9,781	12,853	310.4%
Students in these schools	2,548,243	5,057,780	98%
Hospitals	679	939	38%
Converts	65,943	140,414	213%
Catholic Population	21,406,507	36,023,977	68%.[4]

Monsignor Schuler (1920-2007),[5] who was noted for his work as the director of The Twin Cities Chorale (1956-2007) and the pastor of the Church of St. Agnes in St. Paul, MN (1969-2007), commented in a 2003 interview, “When we came back from the war, there was incredible vitality and growth in the Church.  We thought the whole world was going to become Catholic.”[6] 

My own experience was similar, even if through the eyes of a young boy.  I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware in the 1950s, when we built the parish church.  In 1963-1965 I attended a private boys’ school on the outskirts of the city.  My classmates came from parishes around the area, and many of them, too, were building new churches.  In 1966, we moved to Hagerstown, Maryland and attended a new parish that needed to build a church.  From my perspective, Catholics were people who moved around the country and built churches for a growing Church.

Analysis

It may be tempting to attribute these impressive statistics to population growth alone, since the Catholic population grew by 68% during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.  However, while demographics might explain some of the statistics in the chart above, they do not explain others, such as the growth in seminaries, Catholic educational institutions, students, and especially converts. 

Also, if demographics were the sole explanation for Church statistics, then the various measures that showed growth under Pope Pius XII should have shown even much greater growth since Vatican Council II, since the Catholic population in the U.S. from 1960-2020 grew about 89%, from 35,864,635 to 67,635,546.[7]  Clearly, there is something more than demographics influencing the life and health of the Church.  

The obvious question, then, is “What has influenced the significant decline in the various statistics that describe the life of the Church and demonstrate her health?”  People like to blame Vatican Council II for the decline in the Church, but it is impossible to blame all the decline of the last sixty years on the Council.  Indeed, the decline started a few years prior to the Council.  The truth is that there have been many factors contributing to this decline, such as the rise of material gains in the Catholic population, the influence of television and subsequent forms of electronic communication, the sexual revolution, spurred in part by the widespread availability of the birth control pill, the women’s movement that challenged age-old paradigms regarding family life, and subsequent movements seeking equal rights for various groups such as the LGBTQ groups and now transgender groups. 

Certainly, the Council embraced modern culture in ways unparalleled in Church history.  Thus, it is reasonable to ask if this new “embracement” must bear, at least, some of the responsibility for the Church’s decline, even if it cannot be blamed for all of it.  This is a question for deeper analysis than can be taken up here.  However, one thing is certain.  The Council, its mandates, and its implementation, if they are not at least partly responsible for the decline, have done nothing to stop it. 

More Data

Before drawing this chapter to a conclusion, one more set of statistics needs to be shared.  This information comes from several studies: Pew Research Center studies done in 2007 and 2014,[8] a survey done by Fr. Donald Kloster in 2020,[9] and research done by Gallup in 2014, 2015, and in 2024.[10]

	1955	2000-2003	2014-2017	2019-2020	2021-2023
% of Catholics attending Mass weekly	73%	45%			33%
% of Catholics ages 19-29 attending Mass weekly	73%		25%
% of Catholics ages 18-39 attending Traditional who attend the Latin and attend Mass weekly				98%

The numbers show a dramatic decline in Mass attendance from the pre-conciliar era to the present, with the singular exception of young Catholic adults attending the TLM, which is at a higher percentage than even before Vatican Council II.

Conclusion

The influence of modernism on the Council and the post-Conciliar Church, that seems to be reflected in the new ways in which the Church has embraced modern culture, is discussed in chapter six.[11]  It is not necessary to discuss this here.  Here, let me offer a couple of simple analogies.  In the business world, when companies introduce new products, if the products do not sell, the companies return to products that sold well and work from that point.  For example, in 1985, The Coca-Cola Company introduced “New Coke.”  It was Coke with a new formula – the first change in the product in 99 years.  The new formula was a colossal failure.  Sales plummeted.  Three months later the company brought back the original Coke.

In a science laboratory, when scientific experiments begin to produce poor results, the scientists go back to the last experiments that produced good results and work from that point.  For example, in the sport of basketball, the ball used for the sport has been tweaked over the years, but in 2006, scientists working for the National Basketball Association experimented with a new microfiber ball, which turned out to be a disaster.

“The New Ball,” as it was commonly known, was cheaper to make and was supposed to have the feel of a broken-in basketball right from the start.

Sounds good in theory, but players absolutely hated it. Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, and Dirk Nowitzki complained about the ball to the press. One issue was that the ball apparently became much more slippery than a traditional leather ball when it was wet, which happened frequently when sweaty basketball players were constantly handling it. Some players even reported that their hands were getting cut due to the increased friction of the microfiber surface.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also commissioned a study from the physics department at the University of Texas at Austin, which found that the ball bounced 5 to 8 percent lower than a traditional leather ball and bounced up to 30 percent more erratically. Feeling deflated, the NBA officially announced they were pulling the ball from play on December 11, 2006—less than three months after its debut in a game.[12]

The point is simple.  When I look at the challenges that I and my family face in contemporary society, and I survey the failure of the changes in the Church to address these challenges successfully, it is clear that the fruits of these experiments have not borne good fruit.  Thus, for the sake of our souls, I must resort to what was working, that is, bearing good fruit, before the changes: the traditional Church.  This is not naivete that the challenges facing the Church never change.  It is the conviction that the answer never changes: Jesus Christ, through the Mass and Sacraments that He gave us, through continued prayer, sacrifice, fasting, and almsgiving.

Continued next week

[1] This data came from a Canadian bishop attending the conference.  The numbers may not be precise, but the nature of the decline is clear.

[2] Data from 1965-2002 taken from Kenneth C. Jones, Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II (Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, 2003).

[3] The Official Catholic Directory 2023 (Athens GA: P.J. Kennedy and Sons, 2023), “General Summary,” accessed on 20 February 2024, https://digital_sample.officialcatholicdirectory.com/general-summary/page-gs1?pp=1.

[4] Compiled by Thomas B. Kenedy, editor, and Charles R. Cunningham, managing editor of J.P. Kenedy & Sons, publisher of The Official Catholic Directory (May 1959); cited in “Reminder: The Case for Pacelli,” Rorate-Caeli(14 October 2018), accessed on 6 February 2024, www.rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2018/10/reminder-case-for-pacelli.html.

[5] See “A Short Biography of Monsignor Schuler” accessed on 6 February 2024 at www.churchofsaintagnes.org/msgr-richard-j-schuler.

[6] Edward Schaefer, unpublished interview with Monsignor Richard J. Schuler (May 18, 2003).

[7] See Natalie Jackson, “The Changing Faces of the Catholic Electorate,” Catholics for Choice(18 December 2020), accessed on 7 February 2024, www.catholicsforchoice.org/resource-library/the-changing-faces-of-the-catholic-electorate/#:~:text=Stated%20another%20way%2C%20in%201960%2C%2020%20percent%20of,percent%20of%20the%20US%20population%20was%20white%20Catholic; also The Official Catholic Directory (2020), cited by Clifford A. Grammich, “Catholics in the U.S. Religion Census,” US Religion Census(November 2022), accessed on 7 February 2024, www.usreligioncensus.org/sites/default/files/2023-05/RRA%20Catholic%20presentation.pdf.

[8] “Religious Landscape Study: Attendance at Religious Services,”Pew Research Center (2014 and 2017), accessed on 27 March 2024, www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/attendance-at-religious-services/; “Religious Landscape Study: Catholics,” Pew Research Center (2014 and 2017), accessed on 27 March 2024, www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/catholic/; “US Catholics Open to Non-traditional Families,” Chapter 2: “Participation in Catholic Rites and Observances,” Pew Research Center (2 September 2015), accessed on 27 March 2024, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/09/02/chapter-2-participation-in-catholic-rites-and-observances/.

[9] Brian Williams, “2019-20 TLM Survey: What We Learned About Latin Mass Attending Young Adults,” The Liturgy Guy: Life, Liturgy, and the Pursuit of Holiness (26 May 2020); accessed on 27 March 2024, www.liturgyguy.com/2020/05/26/2019-20-tlm-survey-what-we-learned-about-latin-mass-attending-young-adults/.

[10] Jeffrey M. Jones, “Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups,” Gallup (25 March 2024); accessed on 27 March 2024, www.news.gallup.com/poll/642548/church-attendance-declined-religious-groups.aspx.

[11] See Chapter Six: Modernism.

[12] Stacy Conradt, “14 Experiments Gone Wrong,” Mental Floss (32 March 2021), accessed on 8 February 2024. www.mentalfloss.com/article/638827/experiments-gone-wrong.