December 2021
Why the Traditional Catholic Faith is So Important
TLM & NOM
The June-July 2021 issue of Christian Order referenced a 2019 Catholic Herald report headed, "Traditional Latin Mass attendees more devout and orthodox, study says." The study in question was a piece of research carried out by US Catholic priest Fr. Donald Kloster, which compared the attitudes of Catholics attending the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) in the USA with the attitudes of those attending the Novus Ordo Mass (NOM).
The research revealed huge differences between the two groups. Just 2% of those attending the TLM approved of contraception, compared with 89% of NOM Catholics. Only 1% of TLM Catholics approved of abortion compared to 51% of those attending the NOM.
Contraception & Abortion lead to Dying Countries
Apart from their religious importance for Catholics, contraception and abortion are also of enormous temporal economic and social importance. The different behaviours of the TLM and NOM Catholics are therefore very significant. According to a large study published by the University of Washington in 2020 into the fertility of the world’s countries, the collapse in working populations in many countries is being caused largely by “greater access to reproductive health services,” a polite euphemism for contraception and abortion.
Contraception and abortion are major causes of below replacement fertility, which occurs when births fall below 2.1 children per woman of fertile age. Below replacement fertility leads to dying countries as working populations shrink and the number of women of fertile age declines. It reduces the numbers of skilled and unskilled workers. It reduces tax revenues and government budgets. Hospitals, schools, care homes, shops, hotels, offices and factories face labour shortages.
Huge Fall in Working Age Populations
The massive size of the reduction in working age populations in this century produced by contraception and abortion is both shocking and utterly mind boggling. “Jaw dropping” were the actual words used by Professor Murray, who led the Washington research. By 2100, working populations outside Africa will have fallen by an almost incredible 2 billion. This will have catastrophic economic and geo-political consequences.
Both the two main global forecasters — the UN and the University of Washington are broadly in agreement about present and future trends in fertility. By the end of the century, China’s working population, for example, will have fallen by an absolutely extraordinary 600 million — a 60% fall — compared with today. India’s will fall by about a quarter.
Currently, half the world’s countries are dying. By the end of the century almost every country in the world will be suffering from below replacement fertility, some very severely.
The total population of over 20 countries, including Japan, Italy and Spain will each have fallen by an extraordinary 50%. Italy’s population will fall by 30 million! Such are the enormous negative consequences of below replacement fertility driven largely by contraception and abortion.
Abortion in the UK, for instance, is equal to a fertility rate of about 0.6. If the UK had no abortions, its fertility rate would rise from its current level of 1.7 children per woman of fertile age to about 2.3 — above the replacement level of 2.1.
Ignoring reality
Despite the University of Washington’s research being published in 2020 in the Lancet, the world’s pre-eminent medical journal, the implications of its findings were largely ignored even by its own authors. The report accepts that the trends in fertility threaten the economic systems of many countries and will undermine public finances. Yet, unbelievably, the report’s authors have insisted that no changes should be made to reproductive health services. These services, the report argues, must be “protected”.
This attitude is both harmful and delusionary. People are refusing to face reality.
It’s as if a patient was dying from taking some deadly recreational drugs. Tests reveal the key drugs that are killing the patient, but, incomprehensibly, the doctors do not recommend the patient discontinues his deadly drug cocktail. So the patient’s health declines still further. Similarly, if nothing is done about the causes of below replacement fertility then countries will continue to die.
Despite being widely regarded as essential and as women’s rights, contraception and abortion are severely damaging increasing numbers of countries. We can believe what we like about contraception and abortion, but we cannot prevent their negative consequences.
The tsunami of collapsing working populations throughout the world has exposed secular beliefs and behaviour supporting contraception and abortion to be deadly delusions, and not based on reason. Our beliefs and behaviour — and the policies of government — must conform to objective reality or negative consequences will inevitably follow. Grand sounding beliefs such as ‘liberty, freedom and women’s reproductive rights’ have resulted in to below replacement fertility and dying countries. In the UK, nearly 20% of women bear no children at all, many of them voluntarily.
We may believe we have the right and power to decide just how many children we want but it is a matter of simple arithmetic that unless our collective fertility conforms to objective reality (2.1 children) declining workforces and dying countries will result. Objective reality is the final decider whether our beliefs and behaviour result in negative consequences or not.
Catholic Apostasy
Apart from reproductive health services, another major cause of dying countries has been the abandonment by millions of Catholics of traditional Catholic beliefs about fertility, which consider contraception and abortion to be grave sins. This massive apostasy of beliefs and behaviour took place during and after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960’s. The encyclical, Humanae Vitae, published by Pope Paul VI in 1968, restated traditional Catholic teaching on contraception, but it was condemned or ignored by most Catholics.
But the Catholic Faith about fertility is not just an opinion — a set of beliefs and behaviour which we can adopt or discard at our leisure, because we think human beings have the right to believe what they want and behave how they like. True belief conforms to objective reality, false beliefs do not. Only the Catholic Faith about fertility conforms fully to objective reality by treating contraception and abortion as serious sins. False beliefs and behaviour result in negative consequences, including death and destruction.
Can the world survive without the TLM and traditional Catholic teaching? Dom Prosper Gueranger, the 19th century restorer of the Benedictine Order and scholar of the Liturgy did not think so. He wrote: “…should the Sacred Sacrifice cease it will not be long before we fall back into the abyss of depravity…”. A hundred years later Padre Pio echoed Dom Gueranger when he said,
“The world could even exist without sunlight but not without the Holy Mass”.
Both men were of course referring only to the TLM. Padre Pio himself rejected the NOM and wanted to avoid using it. In March 1967 Padre Pio was visited in his monastery in San Giovanni Rotondo in Apulia by Cardinal Baggio with a message from Pope Paul VI. He told Padre Pio that the Pope had given him special permission not to have to use the NOM when it was fully introduced, and that he could continue celebrating the TLM. Only later, and under the strict discipline of obedience to his superiors was Padre Pio forced to incorporate some aspects of the NOM into his masses.
The secular and NOM worlds are dying from the negative secular consequences of contraception and abortion, while the traditional Catholic world is small but growing quickly, particularly in the USA, where there are around 500 traditional parishes. Congregations at TLM’s include many young couples with big families. As an article in the Catholic Herald in 2017 put it: “The Kids are Old Rite”. The future is youth and fertility.
Recently my wife and I attended the first traditional Easter Triduum celebrated in a nearby Catholic church for nearly 60 years. A significant number of the congregation at all the three masses were young families with children.
Until the Covid disaster called a temporary halt to the annual Chartres pilgrimage in 2020, increasing numbers of overwhelmingly young pilgrims, as many as 20,000, inspired by the TLM, took part in the pilgrimage, walking the 70 miles from Paris to Chartres cathedral.
Traditional Catholicism is True Belief
Conforming our beliefs and behaviour about fertility to the will of God or to objective reality means much the same thing. They are two sides of the same truth, one side secular or temporal and the other side spiritual or religious. False secular beliefs and NOM Catholicism about fertility are leading to dying countries. They cannot be true religions. If we want to be totally objective, we have to admit that TLM and NOM Catholics believe two completely different religions with regard to fertility.
In contrast, traditional Catholic beliefs about fertility, contraception and abortion conform to objective reality and ensure the survival of humanity. Christ must reign, His kingdom must come, His will must be done, or societies will die. That’s why we all have to be traditional Catholics.