Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone: It’s Time for a Renaissance of Excellence in Catholic Liturgy

Observers point to many serious problems: the decline in marriage and the impending demographic crisis; the parallel decline in young people accepting the call to priesthood and the religious life; ever growing family fragmentation; lingering fallout from revelations of clergy sexual abuse of decades ago; the scandal caused by prominent Catholics who stridently oppose foundational moral truths; lack of clarity in presenting the Church’s teachings on the sensitive issues of our time and the ensuing divisions that result from it; the rise of social media as an alternative magisterium, replacing parents and parish alike as the primary educators of children. And the list goes on.

These are all important. But if you ask me, the problem underlying them all is the loss of the sense of the sacred — and most especially in how Catholics worship.

What does this loss mean? We are seeing it played out before our very eyes: the failure to evangelize the next generation of young Catholics in our pews leading to a cascading decline in Catholic faith and practice, as witnessed by the decline in Mass attendance, marriages, baptisms and religious vocations. At least 40% of adults who say they were raised Catholic have left the Church, Pew Research reported in 2015, and 10 years later, the numbers are not getting better. …

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