From a reader…

In recent weeks I recall reading here and elsewhere some encouraging speculation and projections about the numbers of vocations produced by traditional vs. non-traditional types of communities. I’ve discovered that my parish seems to support those projections. We have both the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form. There are 3 OF Masses each weekend, and one EF.

Recently the parish published information about all the vocations we’ve had from our parish in the last roughly 60 years. Between the years of 1965 and 2007 we had a grand total of 3. However, in the last 10 years since our parish has added the EF, we’ve had 9 new vocations, of which 7 are from EF attending families – 1 priest, 2 brothers, and 4 sisters.

Of the two OF-produced vocations, one is a priest from a very conservative family, who now celebrates the EF himself and has allowed that to greatly influence his OF ars celebrandi.

Bear in mind that there are easily 5 times as many people attending OF Masses at our parish than EF, and yet the EF vocations outnumber them 7 to 2. If you were to assume equal numbers of people at each form, and then extrapolate the data, you’d end up with somewhere around a 15-1 preponderance in favor of the EF. Absolutely amazing.

As we know, the plural of anecdote is data. This is what I’ve been talking about and writing about for a long time. The knock on effect of the Extraordinary Form.

This is why libs hate and fear it.

This is why I have begun to wonder if the Extraordinary Form, after a few more years of disastrous demographics and the churning wake of The Present Crisis, won’t be the “Last Mass Standing”.

¡Hagan lío!