When Cradles Speak: The Birthrate Revolution Destroying Modernism

There’s a lesson in the slow drip from Francis’s Traditionis Custodes — the July 2021 letter that effectively restricted the celebration of the old Roman Rite, the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM).

That lesson isn’t only about liturgy or, how most people would call it–about “church service,” but about how the Catholic Church, over decades, has allowed the meaning of order, Tradition, and sacred vocabulary to erode. Indeed, “decades” describes only the most recent chapter. The infiltration by Christ’s ancient enemies inside the Church goes back much further, and you could stop at any century to see the pattern repeating.

When a form of worship that organically matured over the centuries, finally reaching adult maturity at the Council of Trent–a Catholic response to the Protestant Revolution–becomes subject to permission slips, diocesan whims, and shifting pastoral fashions–what message does that send to the Catholic faithful?

This is Modernism. Progressivism. Liberalism.

Back in 2007, Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum, affirming that the old Mass–with the 1962 Missal–was never abrogated. That decision recognized liturgical pluralism as part of the Catholic patrimony: the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form, side by side.

Here is one challenge to the Benedict document:

The Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) attacked the document, because the text of the Good Friday Prayer for the Jews in the 1962 Missal includes a request to God to “lift the veil” from Jewish hearts and to show mercy, according to one translation, “even to the Jews” (or “also to the Jews”), and refers to “the blindness of that people” (to Christ).^[29] Other objections were raised in the mistaken belief that the pre-1960 form of the Prayer for the Jews that was included in the original form of the Tridentine Mass was being restored,^[30] a form that spoke of “the faithless Jews” (pro perfidis Iudaeis), which some interpreted as meaning “the perfidious Jews”. Pope John XXIII replaced this prayer in 1959, so that it does not appear in the missal permitted by Summorum Pontificum.^[31] The American Jewish Committee (AJC) stated in a press release:

We acknowledge that the Church’s liturgy is an internal Catholic matter and this motu proprio from Pope Benedict XVI is based on the permission given by John Paul II in 1988 and thus, on principle, is nothing new. However we are naturally concerned about how wider use of this Tridentine liturgy may impact upon how Jews are perceived and treated. We appreciate that the motu proprio actually limits the use of the Latin Mass in the days prior to Easter, which addresses the reference in the Good Friday liturgy concerning the Jews. […] However, it is still not clear that this qualification applies to all situations and we have called on the Vatican to contradict the negative implications that some in the Jewish community and beyond have drawn concerning the motu proprio.^[32]

In response to such continued complaints, Pope Benedict XVI in 2008 replaced the prayer in the 1962 Missal with a newly composed prayer that makes no mention of blindness or darkness.

This shows many things, but one I’ll mention is that, even when Benedict expanded access to the old Mass, outside pressure–especially political and interreligious pressure–was waiting at the door.

If anyone has studied the two liturgies–or perhaps even just attended and is particularly observant and sensitive in spirit–it is immediately clear that these are two wholly different approaches to worship, perhaps even two different religions.

Then came Traditionis Custodes–and a sharp and disconcerting reversal. The 2021 motu proprio stripped away the broad freedom granted by Benedict, made diocesan bishops gatekeepers of the new rite, banned new communities for the TLM, and demanded that priests follow new–often oppressive–authorization procedures.

Even now, under the pontificate of Leo XIV, those restrictions remain, despite some breadcrumbs thrown to the dogs to keep them off the scent. The Vatican has confirmed that Leo does not intend to overturn Traditionis Custodes, though some bishops may request, and perhaps receive, two-year dispensations to allow TLM celebrations, “which is already the directive normative.”

That’s a cold fact when one considers the breadcrumb, scraps-from-the-table nature of this. Too many traditional Catholics find hope in such abbreviated manipulation. What’s more troubling is what this conditional permission, this bureaucratic limbo, demonstrates: When Tradition becomes optional, when sacred rites depend on whimsical applications instead of binding inheritance, something is seriously amiss. Perennial continuity–the idea that the Church conserves–guards–what is valuable, what is timeless–dissolves like a slug under salt on a hot summer sidewalk.

Can you hear the sssss sound?

Synodality for All–Except for Traditional Catholics

Democracy and data should absolutely not matter in relation to Truth and God’s revelation. We have the truth, and Catholics believe that its fullness is found in the Catholic Church built on the blood of saints who came before us. But for arguments’ sake–one that heavily favors Tradition–let’s enter the Modernists’, the synodalists’, illusion….

The suppression of the TLM coincides with data that tell a different story from what the general message coming from Rome for decades now–including during the reign of John Paul II. It’s what most of us grew up with and why it is so difficult for someone like me to persuade. According to a recent survey cited by commentators at LifeSiteNews, women attached to the TLM reportedly show significantly higher birth rates than those who attend the post-Conciliar, 1960s-created Novus Ordo Mass:

The Kingship of Christ is predicated upon the need for the Christian faithful to be fruitful and multiply. Without people in the pews, any religion begins to lose her influence and whatever semblance of religiosity it once held. The Catholic Church, as a result of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council and specifically the implementation of the Novus Ordo Mass, is seeing a continued decline in the birth rate. The Kingdom of Christ on earth, the Church Militant, is suffering from a crisis of the number of souls within.

If there are fewer babies, the future of Pope Paul VI’s liturgical year 1970 Novus Ordo invention (promulgated the First Sunday of Advent November 30, 1969), is very much in danger of extinction as we get nearer to the year 2060. In my opinion, it will not survive the 100-year anniversary. When I did my first Traditional Latin Mass National Survey in 2018, the birth rate among Novus Ordo women was an above the replacement level 2.3 babies per woman. The break-even number to replace the existing population fulcrum is 2.1 babies per woman. Now, just over seven years later, the birth rate for the Novus Ordo women has fallen to 1.9 babies per woman. That is just 0.2 births greater than the current U.S. birth rate of 1.7 babies per woman. It is important to know that no population subset recovers from a birth rate under 1.9 babies per woman. The fact that the Novus Ordo birth rate has fallen so precipitously should be alarming to bishops and pastors alike.

Where Novus Ordo-preferring women now allegedly fall below replacement rate, the Traditional Latin Mass community–following older sacramental norms around marriage, family, and procreation–appears robust, even thriving. This suggests something far deeper than nostalgia or aesthetic preference: a lived faith, rooted in dogma, discipline, and the sense of transcendence that the TLM embodies.

This isn’t merely demographic trivia. Birthrates are the hard data that reveal spiritual vitality. A community that welcomes life is a community confident in its future, its identity, and its mission.

That goes for any organization, and we understand that in the secular world.

We would do well to embrace it here.

Here is a very bottom line fact that many don’t consider: If trends continue, the demographic center of gravity in the Church will slowly shift toward Tradition–not because of polemics or online debates necessarily, but because traditional communities are the ones actually populating the future Church.

This may all come down to breeding.

Again, we understand it when we get worried about the illegal invasion and the reconstituting of America. Do Catholics understand it here?

Are we willing to at least be curious as to what the attraction is exactly?

I won’t say much in the way of the personal because I don’t want this to come across as self-referential–which is the exact poison of feeling and sentiment inside Modernism–but I can testify to this: I know in my soul I would have grown up and matured differently had I lived the true Catholic Faith of our ancestors along the way. I continue to have to conquer my past sins, but it’s different. Everything is wholly different in this “version” of Catholicism, and I’ll leave it at that.

When the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and not just a communal gathering to break bread is treated as optional, those most affected are not only words or rituals–they’re souls, families, and the future of the Church.

Many who know the person trying to ring the alarm bell will discount such an effort because of familiarity alone. I invite you, reader, to see beyond your knowledge of the messenger and reflect on the robustness of the message. This is about guarding what makes the Catholic Faith what it is, and nothing personal about a messenger changes that.

The suppression of the Latin Mass mirrors much larger theological and ecclesial shifts I’ve questioned as a charitable layman in this space before: the dissolution of doctrine into sentiment, the reduction of supernatural order to social activism, the redefinition of core terms like “mercy,” “unity,” “mission.” Just check out my recent catalogue going back just a couple of pages to the end of October for a start.

I trust you will find in its consistency everything the saints, Church Fathers, and true guardian bishops have been saying for centuries. You don’t have to believe me. Believe them.

When worship becomes negotiable, so does authority. When Tradition becomes optional, so does continuity. When words lose their stability, communities lose their anchor of language.

If “unity” now means uniting elements that directly violate the Law of Non-Contradiction–the belief that God cannot be both Trinitiarian and not Trinitarian, for instance–then we are already long down a road entirely different from what the Church was built for.

And if contradiction becomes a virtue, how can dogma and doctrine survive at all?

In such a reality, everything the martyrs spilled their blood for is for nothing.

Indeed, everything Christ spilled his blood for is for nothing.

A Modest Proposal

Perhaps it’s no accident that the only communities still generating large families–still believing in the sacramental economy of life–are precisely the ones most closely tied to the old rites. Where the ancient Mass thrives, so does the willingness to sacrifice, to marry young, to raise children, to embrace the cross.

Ask yourself: If the demographics point decisively toward Tradition, why would the hierarchy who claims to honor Tradition push so hard in the other direction?

Think. Pray. Fast on this.

The persuasion? The proposal?

To remember our roots. To rebuild our structures.

Maybe it’s time for all Catholics–not just traditionalists, not just ritual-nostalgics, not just those stuck in “rigidity”–to ask the sobering questions.

Because if we lose the anchor of the liturgy, we risk losing everything–not in a flash, but in a slow drift.

Real renewal–including Eucharistic Renewal– won’t come through bureaucratic exceptions or trendy dispensations. It won’t come through pep rallies or rock concerts for Jesus. It will come through conviction, clarity, and a return to the order Christ entrusted to His Church.

It will come through ad orientum–try it for a year and you’ll see it. Some say try it for 4-6 Masses.

It reorients you.

And perhaps the quiet secret of this moment is that renewal is already happening–in cradles, in nurseries, in overflowing parish halls where strollers line the walls and families spill out into the aisles and where confession lines are so long not everyone can get in. If the hierarchy refuses to turn toward Tradition, the demographics will turn the Church toward Tradition for them. Grace will not be outpaced by bureaucracy.

The future is being born, quite literally, within the past.

That is the Church handed down to us. It never ended. We just thought it did because we were never told otherwise.

Look where the children are. There you will find the future. There you will find renewal. There you will find the Church that still believes she has something worth fighting for–and something worth handing down.