Ours is still growing. We've permission from our bishop to begin looking for a place to purchase or build on our own.

We are up around 25% on Sundays and make up 54% of the Sunday Mass attendance, and 74% of the weekday Mass attendance.

Very different from Ontario, I see. Only three venues in the whole of Quebec, each in a different diocese.

I agree with Tom that part of the problem is exposure.

I didn't have any particular axe to grind with the N.O. until I was in my late 20's. I was disgusted by the behavior of some priests in the sanctuary that I'd encountered (I've detailed this elsewhere on the forum) and eventually sought respite in a TLM community. This happened, largely, because I had nowhere else to turn.

At the time, I would have been perfectly happy with a reverent N.O. Mass, which we had at one point. I had one pastor who wore his cassock, said Mass versus Deum, and had a communion rail reinstalled which he encouraged people to use, and he asked me to chant (my first exposure to chant). All of these things thrilled me because they were in accord with my sensus fidelium. It was only when things got really bad after his departure that I sought retreat in a TLM community, being left with nowhere else to turn.

Upon first attending, it was an absolute revelation to me—I had no idea Mass could be so beautiful, reverent, mysterious, and more to the point: that there were whole communities of people who worshipped together who took their faith as seriously as I took mine. It was seeing an hour-long line into the confessional week after week before Mass that impressed me most.

But I also remember feeling very angry; very angry indeed... with that very first low Mass on a Saturday and hour away from home, I realized just what had been kept hidden from me my whole life. I was heart-broken that I went through all my formative years never having attended a single TLM. I was angry that chant had been hidden from me. That I was 25 before I was given my first opportunity to kneel at a rail. And on, and on, and on...

None of these revelations or feelings would have come to be if: a.) I hadn't been driven to it by truly awful N.O. liturgies, and b.) had it not been offered and accessible. People just don't know what they don't know, you know?

But now I cannot un-know all of the things I've learned and witnessed. They are burned into the ver fibre of my soul. What I learned from my months of attending TLM absolutely informs everything I do now in my current parish position (at a N.O. parish).

Similarly, my choir has now been tasked with singing 3? solemn TLM's now, for special occasions and it has been a revelation for all of them as well. Now they understand why I'm steering them the direction that I am, and they are all sympathetic to it as a result.

A very heavy hand, overplayed.

The TLM these days has an intentional community composed of those who take worship seriously. When it was just cultural, a badge of membership, in many cases it was no more (and no less) significant than other forms of 'patriotism' like adherence to a football team.

I have been to NO masses that were so bad I either left, or put in earplugs. One of my students was shocked and exclaimed, "you are wearing earplugs!" I did that often. I thought the TLM was preferable to the bad NO masses I witnessed, but had nothing against NO masses done well. Being Byzantine I always had an escape if things got really bad.

A local Church flirting with Jansenism, a heavily clericalist clergy that, as said, overplayed its hand, and interference in the affairs of state in a manner

This happened in France and the TLM is now growing, in one diocese 20% of Sunday Mass attendance is TLM. Jansenism comes from the people not the Church, some people seem to like it. As for clericalism that seems to be a problem of the modern Church as Pope Francis keeps telling us. Of course a priest telling people 'go sin no more' is not clericalism, but the Jews rejected Christ to his face when he told them to go 'sin no more' so it is not surprising that priests receive the same treatment.

allowed Quebecers to remain poor and uneducated

I do find it amusing that the organisation that has done the most to help educate the poor, and deliver people from poverty is accused of the opposite, but I suppose it is easy to create a straw man and blame all your self imposed problems on it rather than take personal responsibility.

The people who most remember that era, are the people least likely to want Latin, the TLM, etc.

A small minority across the world reject the Faith of our Fathers and wish to follow the prince of the world, rather than Christ the King. It was always thus, this is not new and we can always tell when people are on the wrong path... 'by their fruits you will know them'.

a woman went to confession...

What goes on in the confessional is private, and is not for public consumption. I do find it worrying that people believe they can have a contraceptive mentality and still be Catholic. I also find it bizarre that people are going to confession and are rejecting absolution... that is the road to hell.

So there is demand for good liturgy.

We all know this, as long as we ignore the vocal minority. I am interested, how is your 'reverent' N.O. Mass any different from the TLM, in the case that the congregation is self selecting and not representative of the nominal Catholic of any diocese?

and centred on one large extended family in a parish where the OF and EF sides hardly acknowledge the other exists...

There is nothing wrong with an extended family living in a close knit geographical area and attending the Mass together, this is by and large the case for the last 2000 years of Church history. I can well understand a decreasing N.O. community that happily embraced a contraceptive mentality being rather put out seeing a family reject the prince of this world and his lies and being truly open to life. I have nine children, and some people are really put out when they see us.

Ireland's problem was they expected the Church to solve their worldly problems, during a time of political and social upheaval. The Church is made up of men and women and we are all fallible. To blame the Church is an easy thing to do, and some of its members have behaved badly, but it is very unjust to all those members of the Church that did their best, kept the Faith, and passed it on. We must not forget this Faithful remnant, are also members of the Church.

So all these nominal Catholics in Ireland that cast blame at the Church, can we for one moment look at what they did in the privacy of the ballot box, who did they vote for? They have voted for politicians that follow a political idea that has failed and brought poverty and oppressed the real poor wherever it has been tried. I am sure that these politicians are delighted that their personal enemy the Church is blamed rather than their political ideology.

“Take up your ideal way of life and follow me...” the “me” in that religion is the prince of darkness.

I have never lived in Ireland, but in London in the 50's and 60's I knew many 'refugees'. And that was just those who still clung to their faith.

"The unspecific story about the widow going to confession and being scolded because she wasn't pregnant or nursing sounds like someone's idea of a joke."

I can certainly attest second hand (that is, being directly told by women who had been in confession) to actual stories adjacent to that, as one might say today.

The attempts to fisk historical realities say more about those who feel a need to fisk than the realities.

PS: A penitent is under no canonical nor moral obligation of secrecy concerning the penitent's confession as such. (The priest is, and anyone assisting in interpretation, and anyone overhearing the confession is, but not the penitent herself.)

Well, not sure what you mean by "our times" but the times I was talking about are beyond a generation ago. My mother's repulsion at falsehoods comes immediately to mind, a similar tenor to that of the dearest friends I am thinking of. Quite the contrary. Excessive accusation may be enabled by social media these days, but it's on the heels of generations of excessive deference to collars.

@Chonak

The unspecific story about the widow going to confession and being scolded because she wasn't pregnant or nursing sounds like someone's idea of a joke.

It was actually quoted in a book about the priesthood that I borrowed from the abbey's library when I worked there. I forget the details of the book though, it was a couple of years ago.

@Tomjaw

I do find it amusing that the organisation that has done the most to help educate the poor, and deliver people from poverty is accused of the opposite, but I suppose it is easy to create a straw man and blame all your self imposed problems on it rather than take personal responsibility.

Not really. The clergy's plan to overcome the anglo menace was through a high birth rate. Ironically, this kept Francophone Quebecers dirt poor and made them ripe for exploitation by the anglos. I think you'd have to study the history of this era in Québec to really understand. The Church here destroyed itself by placing inhuman burdens on the population. The revolt and wholesale abandonment of the faith didn't just drop out of the air or materialize because Quebecers were more hedonist than anyone else. Fact is, they couldn't afford to be hedonist. They just wanted normal Protestant-sized families they could afford to bring up, and afford to educate, rather than the 10+ kids that the Church foisted upon them.

Ora

High birthrates don't "keep" Quebecois --or anyone else -- dirt poor, but that canard has been around for so long that it is taken for truth.

High birthrates don't "keep" Quebecois --or anyone else -- dirt poor

Well, I think it is fine to admit that - depending on a man's/father's (or family's) job and income - high birthrates certainly can make one poor, to some degree another. The key is to a) first of all define what we really mean by "poor," and b) based on that definition, recognize the possibility that being poor is often not as bad as people make it out to be, and c) especially get it out of our heads that what we view as a comfortable life today can be dispensed with in order to live on less income. It may be a harder life than what maybe many of us (myself included, though my family of 7 kids was probably considered lower middle class) grew up with, but except in possibly the most extreme cases, I doubt it is any less truly happy, if one has a good mindset toward it and has a life truly permeated with the Catholic faith.

I guess my overall point/observation is that Catholics today are probably much more wealthy today than in the 1950s, both in Quebec and most other places, and there sure isn't much - if anything at all - to show for that in terms of living/practicing/believing in the fullness of the Catholic faith. So in that context, being "poor" sounds like a pretty bad excuse to abandon their Catholic faith/lives. There is absolutely nothing in the whole Catholic tradition to suggest that being poor is a bad thing, and conversely, that being rich (or even simply "not poor") is any sort of virtue. If anything it would be quite the opposite.

It may surprise many to learn that, as a historical matter, family size self-regulation among the laboring classes in the Catholic world goes back to pre-Revolutionary France, and rather quickly spread to adjacent areas of the Catholic world (like right across the Rhine). It's not an artifact of the post-World War II era as such, but began around the time of the advent of the Industrial Age.

The problem is basically not, from what I heard from my colleague, that high birth rates made people poor.

It's that those high birth rates were imposed by the clergy, often through public humiliation or such, without any regard to the possibilities of the families, including the health of the mother.

And there is high birth rate and high birth rate. Actually my colleague's grandmother was publicly humiliated for not yet being pregnant of her 12th child one year after the birth of the eleventh. I hardly can see any contraceptive mentality in that, especially not after 11 children.

Or maybe we should ask Tomjaw when his 10th child is due.

Having children does not make you poor, having children makes you rich. We have been instructed to go forth and multiply, we are expected to fill heaven with souls. By refusing to have children, we are not open to the culture of life. When we reject the culture of life our whole culture dies. This is seen clearly in every western country now.

Too many people above are taking the exception, of a few priests that made misguided efforts to fight against the evil pest of a contraceptive mentality, which usually comes with the deadly sins of Greed and Envy. Temporal goods are effectively valueless to the Catholic in the long term and in the short term are to be used to help our neighbour. I am sure and know that all priests were not like this and the examples above are in some cases exaggerated. Of course if you believe that the Church began with Vatican II, everything beforehand must be bad.

What makes people poor is themselves, they suffer from poverty of ambition, poverty of being open to love of God and neighbour. It is easy to be selfish, but difficult to be cheerful in adversity. Every Christmas we are shown an example of cheerfulness in adversity, did the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph complain endlessly that they did not have a soft bed? Did they wallow in misery blaming others? Who can say any of our family members among the last few generations experienced the poverty the Holy Family experienced on their journey to Bethlehem...

Or maybe we should ask Tomjaw when his 10th child is due.

c. 9 months after my wife finishes breast feeding?

Having children does not make you poor, having children makes you rich. We have been instructed to go forth and multiply,

Some theologians believe this was less a dictate and more a benediction. It is ultimately both, but I believe the latter sentiment deserves the emphasis.

In the 19th and early twentieth centuries, an awful lot of working class families were in perpetual impoverishment due to conditions outside their control: unchecked capitalism, colonialism, empire building, economic collapse, weather patterns, wars, etc.

Chronic 19th century alcoholism didn’t help, but as Charles notes above, being poor in today’s America is a far cry from being poor back then. As TCJ points out, today wise money management and reasonable expectations make it possible to prioritize openness to life.
Doubtless today’s conditions did not prevail in Quebec.

I survive by not trying to keep up with other people. Each child is a blessing and God will provide.

If you are married, everything else in life pales when you have children... they make you the richest person on earth and having money or not has nothing to do with the matter.

That's the part I easily agree with!
Convincing your kids that it's secondary to have a room each for their own + a smartphone with data flatrate + inviting a bunch of other kids to your birthday party the style your classmates do + getting pocket money such that you can join your classmates going out in the weekend, that's the other thing... (certainly worth trying!)

I believe it's also a question of having some king of 'alternative' peer group available.
When I was young, a considerable fraction of my age group (across christians and non-christians) tended to oppose the 'materialistic consumption society'. This is rare among the young these days, even with 'Fridays for Future'... living your conviction is easier when you have at least a few like-minded people around. (increasingly off-topic)

The idea that if we just have more children, we will have more Catholics is flawed. Many of those kids grow up and leave the church anyway. They are not being given a good reason for staying.

Well, there was a connection (based on ancient Greek medical ideas) in marital and dietary abstinence, because it was believed that eating flesh meat stirred the corporeal passions (one of layers of reasons for monastics to be vegetarian; and ascetic practices for penitential periods for non-clerics were drawn from monastic models, but with much local variation and non-uniformity of levels/modes of enforcement).

Not wrong. The church has been turned into a touchy-feely circus and is more of a social club than a place to worship. One can stay home, avoid all the political correctness, and not have to listen to bad music and sappy sermons. I used to not think so, but I believe the U.S. has turned into mission territory.