The parish that prefers death to new life

By Hunter Swogger ( bio - articles ) | Apr 21, 2026

Alex Begin is a veteran of the liturgy wars. For the better part of four decades in Michigan and Canada, he has been behind the most successful traditional Catholic movement the world over. Prior to last summer’s crackdown, the Archdiocese of Detroit was home to twenty-eight Latin Masses, and had so thoroughly impressed previous Archbishop Allen Vigneron that he sent the following laudatory reply to the infamous survey preceding Traditionis Custodes:

[The liberation of the Latin Mass] has given us a remarkably successful approach to resolving the contention that existed in the Church about the status of the Extraordinary Form. The discipline it has put in place is bearing much good fruit, especially in the lives of the faithful and in restoring ecclesial peace... By my lights Summorum Pontificum has been a remarkable success.

Mr. Begin has seen the TLM thrive in a variety of situations, dioceses, and countries. There is, however, one specific scenario that has portended trouble: the dying parish given a suddenly thriving Latin Mass.

In 2004, a dying Detroit parish became the first to offer the TLM since 1970. The immediate success of the old liturgy, both in the quantity and youth of those attracted, sent shockwaves through the archdiocese. An obvious boon, the situation seemed beyond sensible critique, and within years, Latin Masses were getting started all over the archdiocese.

But in 2012, coinciding with the appointment of a new pastor, the “inner circle” of long-time parishioners began agitating against the ascendant TLM. They insisted that the TLM community hadn’t been giving enough “time, talent, and treasure” to the parish. When evidence was provided showing that the TLM community had brought in approximately two-thirds of the parish revenue, the inner circle demurred. “No matter what we did, no matter what we showed them, it was never enough,” Begin explains.

The animosity from the “inner circle” and parish leadership eventually drove over half of the TLM community away. But the dwindling attendance affected the “inner circle” at this Detroit parish not at all; there was no reckoning or come-to-Jesus moment; there was seemingly no self-reflection or attempt to win back the souls who had fled. Rather, the “inner circle” considered the departure of these families to be addition by subtraction. “They were happy that we were leaving,” recalls Begin. “They considered it a success.”

Soon after, the parish was merged; today, it is functionally shuttered, with no regular Masses on offer. This is the story of a group of Catholics in a dying parish who, when presented with an unexpected lifeline, positively chose to cast it off. They would rather the parish die with them.

For my brethren in the Diocese of Saginaw, this tale echoes bitterly. The only TLM in all mid-Michigan was recently cancelled for months on the flimsiest of pretexts; the cherished, irreplaceable Catholic community shattered. But it was not due to a draconian bishop’s decree, nor was it at the hands of an overreaching Roman bureaucrat. Rather, the attack originated internally, with the dying parish’s “inner circle” lashing out at the ascendant TLM. Nearly 200 souls have been driven away, many to parishes outside of the diocese entirely, without the slightest hint of remorse from those responsible. Rather, their feeling is one of relief: they are glad to be rid of the “Bad Apples”—yes, this is how they have been referring to the wave of families who had breathed life into a dying parish. The “inner circle” would rather the parish die with them.

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This phenomenon is not unique to our neck of the woods; some bishops even referenced this problem in the Vatican’s Summorum Pontificum survey that preceded Traditionis Custodes:

Division and discord do not arise from the use of the EF, but rather from the perception people have of those who attend it. Motivations and tendencies are attributed to people that are not true at all. (Diocese of Savannah, USA, response to question 3).

The Bishop of the Diocese of Vannes, France reflected on the difficulties that TLM communities have experienced in integrating into parishes:

This may be their own fault, when they are distrustful of the pastoral direction of the Diocese or the Parish and prefer to live in isolation. But it may also be due to those who are attached to the Ordinary Form, who struggle to understand the specific characteristics and expectations of these faithful, as well as the way they live their faith.

Alex Begin points out that dual-rite parishes tend not to have such problems when the Ordinary Form is thriving, particularly when it is celebrated in continuity with the Latin Rite’s liturgical heritage. Rather, it is the dying parishes that resist most stridently the new life breathed into them by ascendant TLM communities.

What is so perplexing about such behavior is that the perpetrators in these parishes tend not to be evil people; in truth, they tend to be some of the most upstanding citizens among us, men and women who genuinely love their parish and who have given untold amounts of time, energy, and resources toward its service. Yet these parishes, and the otherwise decent souls in their “inner circles” seem to become infected with a life-repellant mentality; not a culture of death, precisely, but a Culture of Dying.

The Culture of Dying does not desire destruction, but rather actively resists revitalization. Take, as an example, the stunning recent case of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in New York, who voted unanimously in the spring of 2023 to refuse new vocations and positively embrace extinction—or, as they termed it, “completion”. They would rather the order die with them—and they have ensured that it will.

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A beloved elderly relation of mine—a lifelong, earnest Catholic, and certainly holier than I—recently left her longtime parish, in which she had been an embedded figure for decades. When pressed thereafter about what could possibly have prompted her departure, she blurted, seemingly before she could stop herself, “there’s a bunch of young men with beards there all of a sudden.”

It was true. Following the appointment of a new pastor (himself a youngish, bearded man), her parish, which had previously had the demographics of a bingo night, began to transform. Traditional forms of piety returned; liturgical solemnity was restored; and yes, fighting-aged men started showing up to Mass.

The importance of men returning to the Catholic Church can hardly be overstated. It was they who first fled following the implementation of the 1970 Missal; England’s Cardinal John Heenan prophesied as much upon viewing a test-run of the reformed liturgy in 1967:

At home it is not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men who come regularly to mass. If we were to offer them the kind of ceremony we saw yesterday in the Sistine Chapel, we would soon be left with a congregation mostly of women and children.

Men are the bellwether of religion: the future is black when they flee, and bright when they return. When fathers practice devoutly, children follow. The widely noted reappearance of men in recent years is, indeed, the Church’s surest sign of hope. But when one’s experience of parish life has been, for decades, that of an old women’s club, the return of young men is often not perceived as the triumphant arrival of a cavalry but as the invasion of an enemy force.

We lament that the majority of our parishes are in a state of “managed decline,” but many of those within these parishes—particularly in leadership positions—rather prefer this decline, precisely because it is manageable. Timothy P. Carney, in his incisive 2024 work Family Unfriendly, observes: “The modern mindset that demands independence above all else also demands control and thus abhors whatever seems to have a life of its own. The inert is much more manageable, more fit for rational arrangement, for planning.”

One can easily control what a dying parish is going to look like, now and into its short future. But one cannot control the composition of a parish that is open to life, for life—even in an age of family planning, eugenic abortion, and IVF—is essentially outside of our domain. A married couple that is radically open to life is intentionally relinquishing control of what their family life will look like and placing it squarely in the hands of Providence. Every single new life forever changes the face of the family and community into which the child is born.

For an aging parish to embrace young people, men in particular, it would necessarily mean embracing a radical change in their lived experience of “church.” It would indeed mean that the parish is going to look, feel, and be irreversibly transformed. This relation of mine has long claimed that she wishes her young descendants practiced the Faith; precisely one does. She laments, in theory, the general decline of Mass attendance she has witnessed throughout her life. And yet, when faced with the choice of a revitalization that requires a dramatic shift in the demographic makeup of her pew mates, she would—in practice—rather the parish die with her.

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“After me, the deluge.”

—King Louis XV

I proceed with caution, for I sympathize with our old-time parishioners. We are asking them to accept dramatic changes to their experience of parish life at an age when “change” is rightly the last thing they desire. I contend that the elderly are perhaps the greatest victims of a modern world that is “chained to the wheel of progress”; that there is little crueler than having created a world in which an octogenarian who was reared on typewriters and rotary-dial telephones is unable to access her bank account without proficiency in QR codes and two-factor authentication. Under ordinary circumstances, it is unfair and unjust to expect the elderly to adapt to sudden changes in their lives. Yet it is plain that the circumstances of our present parishes are far from ordinary and healthy.

A complete, healthy human community must necessarily be composed of the entire age spectrum, and in it, we can observe the beautiful design of man as social animal: the children provide the continual infusion of life into the community; the elderly provide the wisdom, guidance, and stability for all who follow; the “young adults” provide the energy and initiative to fight for the protection of both and the common good for all.

When the elderly are cut off from a given community, the society loses its grounding, its respect for that which endures. The initiative and energy of the youth become perverted in the pursuit of short-term pleasures and short-term fixes. Lacking the wisdom of the elders and the witness of constancy they provide, the community falls to the idolization of change, variety, and novelty. Elders come to be viewed no longer as pillars but as obstacles, derided for their tendency to be stuck in the mud and generally in the way. It is an inhumane mentality—a product of a “throwaway culture,” as Pope Francis noted—and one of which all who still have the privilege of being considered “young” must be wary.

But when it is the youth that are cut off from a given community, the elderly instinct for constancy can become corrupted into a genuine rigidity. Separated from the well-spring of life—those annoying, snot-nosed founts of perpetual renewal known as babies—the elderly can genuinely become stuck in their ways to such an extent that they no longer welcome the young into their realms. The introduction of families to such a parish feels akin to the forced establishment of an indoor playground at a nursing home; the sight of the child at Mass no longer welcomed as a blessing, but resisted as a bane.

It is through this lens that the attitudes toward children and families at our parishes begin to come into focus: the complaints of “loud” kids ruining everyone’s “peaceful” Mass experience; the derision of mothers who (for some unknown reason!) “keep standing up and walking around with their kids” during Mass; the disgust at soccer balls left in the lawn after a post-Mass pickup game amongst the teens. The very signs of life itself are considered an affront.

There may be an element of gramnesia at play here, the phenomenon of grandparents apparently forgetting just how loud, messy, and difficult child-rearing can be. But I am more moved by a perspective offered recently by another local priest, regarding his age-advanced parishioners who express these seemingly anti-child and anti-family attitudes:

None of their children or grandchildren go to Mass. And it eats them up. When they see a homeschool family of 8 arrive for Mass, each kid more devout than the last, it strikes a nerve. They are not happy to see young families at Mass; it pains them.

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“Despise not a man in his old age; for we also shall become old.”

—Sirach 8:7

The Culture of Dying is not, to be sure, a universal affliction among elderly Catholics. The TLM communities I’ve known are full of the most gracious, understanding, child-loving elders one has ever met—as are most all genuinely thriving parishes. Many a faithful senior in a dwindling parish would give anything to see a young family at Mass. But the Culture of Dying is no outlying phenomenon either; it is an accurate appraisal of the majority of our parishes.

Alas, this is our lot. We did not ask to live at a time in which we will have to fight for the Church to even have a future at all, against the will of her own members. But as we proceed in this holy mission and duty to transmit the Faith to our kin, let us never forget that we too are not immune to the temptations and trappings of the Culture of Dying. We too will likely live to see our own efforts stalled, and another’s flourish. God willing, we too will grow old and be faced with the choice of either taking the ship down with us or handing off the vessel of our life’s work to another, whose manner may differ from ours. May we be willing to receive as grace the new life that God breathes into our families, our communities, and our Church, so that they may thrive well after we pass on from this earthly realm.

And most urgently, may we continue to cooperate with grace in the building and strengthening of our local body of Christ, forging a network of domestic churches who lean on each other, strengthen each other, and enable the conditions for the common flourishing of our growing families. Because there is no stronger antidote to the Culture of Dying than a Catholic community that is defiantly alive.