A Traditionalist Avant-Garde

We love The Economist almost as much as we love to see the secular media confounded by all those zealous, young, counter-cultural Catholics.  They just can't figure it out!

 It’s trendy to be a traditionalist in the Catholic church

Smells and bells galore

From The Economist

SINCE the Second Vatican Council in 1962, the Roman Catholic church has striven to adapt to the modern world. But in the West—where many hoped a contemporary message would go down best—believers have left in droves. Sunday mass attendance in England and Wales has fallen by half from the 1.8m recorded in 1960; the average age of parishioners has risen from 37 in 1980 to 52 now. In America attendance has declined by over a third since 1960. Less than 5% of French Catholics attend regularly, and only 15% in Italy. Yet as the mainstream wanes, traditionalists wax.

From Dancing Nuns to New Age, Time Has Come to Save Churches and Turn Back to Sanctity

From Spirit Daily

Pope Benedict XVI has slowly but surely moved on a course that will make him more than just the "caretaker" Pope many envisioned him to be.

And that will come, perhaps, because of his effort -- subtle, but powerful -- in nudging the Church back to greater reverence.

This has been seen in his encouraging re-establishment of elements from the older Mass (including in the way of music as well as the new Missal); requiring every bishop to allow the Latin Rite; and, most recently -- stunningly -- his closure of a major monastery in Rome that had allowed the singer Madonna to perform there and has a nun and former disco dancer who performed modern dance, in church, with a Crucifix. In the U.S. are dozens of convents and retreat centers where nuns have adopted Zen, yoga, and New Age therapies -- an untold scandal that seems to have evaded a Vatican visitation of convents (at least thus far) and the notice of local bishops.