The MTV Generation Goes Tridentine

TIME, June 7—As part of its coverage on how “old religious rituals are being embraced anew by many faiths,” the national news magazine reported on the persistent popularity of the Tridentine Latin Mass, especially on the part of people who are not old enough to remember when the old Mass was a ubiquitous part of Catholic life.

Time's Tim Padgett described one 32-year-old woman as “part of a retro-revolt among U.S. Catholics. The generation that not long ago pushed Gregorian chant into the Top 40 may now plant it back into the Mass.”

“Partly in response to Gen-X interest,” Atlanta is one of a number of dioceses that have established parishes exclusively for Latin Mass celebration. At Chicago's St. John Cantius Church, half the weddings are performed in the old rite.

“All this reflects a back-lash against the earnestly modern Catholic culture that grew out of Vatican II,” said Padgett. The Mass that followed Vatican II “seems rather weak and unclear to the MTV generation,” Father Michael Baxter, a theology professor at Notre Dame University, told Padgett. Concluded Padgett: “The traditional Mass has filled a need for more transcendence through Catholicism that again reaches the soul via the senses.”

Trendsetters Prefer Religion

SALT LAKE CITY TRIBUNE, June 5—It's not surprising to here that God and religious faith are important to Americans. It's another to be told that the “elite” or “trendsetters” hold the same view — but only in larger numbers.

A recent consumer marketing survey showed that 54% of Americans said “religion plays an important part in my life,” while 59% held that view among an elite category of respondents called “trendsetters.”

Of the 5,916 Americans surveyed by the Brand Futures Group of Young and Rubicam, 10% classified as “trendsetters.” Far more Americans rated religion as important than did other national populations surveyed: The Netherlands, 25 %; United Kingdom, 19%; France and Germany, 14%.