Jesuit Amerika Magazine laments: “Where are the millennial Catholic activists?” Answer at Latin Masses

Fr Z writes:-

"Jesuit-run (hence confused) Amerika Magazinehas posted a lament: “Where are the millennial Catholic activists?”

The head-scratching writer is bumfuzzled. Protests for favored lib causes are drawing people with lots of gray hair. Where are the young, social media savvy protesters?

First, the young generation of Catholics don’t feel the need to relive the halcyon days of yore, with the draft card and bra burning, dope smoking and guitar strumming, altar smashing and whitewashing. They don’t have that baggage. They aren’t triggered by protest signs and gray ponytails.

Demographic studies suggest that in a few years the numbers of people in pews will drop dramatically as boomers go to their frightening judgment and the “nones” get a little older and just leave.

In the next few years, dioceses will lose a high percentage of priests. Where I am, three priests have died in the last week.

It’s a war of attrition now as the Biological Solution really kicks into it’s ineluctable gear.

However, last Sunday at the TLM I celebrated it was like day-care in the church.

In these still small but growing traditional groups, there are lots of young families with lots of kids and more on the way.

TLMs are alive all over the place now and there are more and more of them. Since Summorum Pontificum in 2007 the number of TLMs has grown from around 200 to over 500. A couple years ago in France, traditional ordinations accounted for over 20% of all the ordinations.

I suspect that were there to be general permission to use the older Pontificale Romanum for ordinations to the diaconate and priesthood, well over half the men to be ordained would rather have the traditional form than the newer.

My sense is that this can’t be stopped, not without moves that would probably tear the unity of the Church to pieces.  This is so, because the “gravitational pull” or “mutual enrichment” or “knock-on effect” really is taking place.  The Ordinary Form is also being purified of dross in many places because of what priests learn at the TLM altar.  A synergy is building.

Of course the seats of ecclesial power abound with prelates who would rather burn down struggling parishes and watch Satan disco dance in the ashes than do the slightest “traditional” thing to revitalize our identity and evangelical mission.

Hence, because this is also spiritual warfare, YOU, dear readers, need to buckle it on and get to work.

The storm is almost here.

Polish that armor, sharpen that sword, mend that shield, square that gear, do those drills.  Pray for specific intentions.  Practice mortifications for reparation for sins.  Contribute at the parish.  Examine your conscience.

GO TO CONFESSION!

UPDATE:

I post the above and then find an article about parish closures in Europe.  HERE

The Diocese of Trier in Germany will reduce its number of parishes from 172 to 35 by the year 2020

[…]

The details provided by the CNS of some of the other diocesan reorganizations planned or currently underway in Europe makes for sobering reading:
– Berlin: 105 parishes to be reduced to 35 “pastoral spaces”, with unused churches to be sold off and 40% of clergy and lay staffers reassigned, thereby alleviating some of the Diocese’s $140 million debt

– Vienna: 660 parishes to be merged into 150 hubs served by a handful of priests

– Luxembourg: 274 parishes reduced to 33

– Clogher, Ireland: 37 parishes cut to 14 “pastoral areas” coordinated by teams of just two priests and six laypeople

– Utrecht: 326 parishes to just 48 hubs in which only one church will serve as a “eucharistic center”

[…]

Some will spin this as a greater opportunity for lay people in the Church. Riiiiight."