Chapter 8: By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them, by Edward Schaefer, PhD

Editor’s note: we continue our weekly serialisation of Dr. Edward Schaefer’s new book A Simple Man’s Case for Tradition. This book is an excellent introduction to Traditionalism and provides an easy way for Trads to introduce the movement to fellow Catholics who are seeking deeper answers to today’s questions. Proceeds from the book sale also help promote the Collegium Sanctorum Angelorum, one of only two traditional Catholic colleges in the United States.

Read the Introduction
Read chapter 1: Equally Valid and Holy
Read chapter 2: the New Mass
Read chapter 3: Latin
Read chapter 4: Practice & Belief
Read chapter 5: One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic
Read chapter 6: Modernism
Read chapter 7: Tradition and the Family

The Fruits of the Last Sixty Years (1960-2020)

In the fall of 2019, I was invited to a seminary to speak to the seminarians about music in the Church.  While there, it became apparent to me that these young men were being prepared to minister in a declining church.  About this same time, there was a meeting of bishops from North and Central America held in Orlando.  The topic of the meeting was how to manage the decline in the Church’s membership.  The diocese of Pittsburgh was used as a model.  It had reduced parishes under one bishop from about 230 to 188 and was now in the process of reducing parishes to about 45.^[1]  In the fall of 2023, a colleague of mine attended a diaconal retreat in Baltimore.  At this retreat one of the auxiliary bishops commented that by 2027 there would be no parishes in Baltimore city proper.  It is no secret to anyone that the Catholic Church is in a state of decline.

Too, the decline is not small.  It is huge.  A few statistics will demonstrate: …..

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