The longtime college chaplain said young people seek reverence and silence in the liturgy and sometimes drive ‘more than hour each way’ for the Latin Mass.
BLOOMINGTON, Indiana (LifeSiteNews) -- A campus priest said Gen Z wants reverence and silence in the liturgy but they often face pushback from older generations.
Father Patrick Hyde is a Dominican priest and the pastor of the St. Paul Catholic Center at Indiana University in Bloomington. He recently shared his observation of younger Catholics based on his nearly 10 years of experience ministering to college students.
"The past few years, I have noticed more of an emphasis on and attraction to the liturgy," Hyde wrote on X. "We even have students who drive more than hour each way for Sunday TLM Mass."In a noisy world, the students want "something that takes them out of the rigmarole of constant distractions and attempts to entice their senses."
"These young people have spent their entire lives bombarded with noise & images," Hyde said. "They want a break that both lets them rest & leads to God."However, the students can struggle because each parish might differ in its liturgy and, as a result, "they struggle to make sense of the varied and sometimes contradictory approaches to liturgy in our parishes."
While the students may find quality liturgies on campus or at a nearby church, tension ensues when they leave campus and want to find something similar or replicate it at their home parish.
The students "often feel patronized or ignored. This is a natural tension in [intergenerational] communities. What one generation sees as exemplary, another sees as problematic," the priest explained.
Yet, some parishioners will push back and leave the students feeling isolated.
Finally, Hyde said young people want to be "challenged by their faith."
"They’ve grown up in the land of moral relativism and found it lacking," he explained. "So, they want a community (and especially priests) who will hold them to the highest standards."The priest noted he is not trying to take a "side" but to illustrate tensions and problems. He said, as a priest, he wants to learn more.
"I also want to point out that decades of confusion & widely varied practices have led us here," Hyde concluded. "It won’t be a simple, quick, or easy path forward, but, as liturgy is the height of worship, it’s a worthwhile endeavor."The priest's observations were affirmed not just by the laity but by other clergy who said they had similar experiences.
"Young adults rightly crave the ancient/mystical," Father Dan Andrews, the pastor of the Newman Center at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, wrote in response.
Father Andrew Dickinson, a former campus priest himself, said the thread is "very good."
"The young live in a very 'plastic' world, malleable around their wishes; which can be good, but is also a source of confusion and betrayal," he added. "Technology is the main 'plastic' source." "So there is a hunger for stability that will not betray them," he added further. "Much of the liturgical settings (architecture and music for sure) are 'plastic' to the whim of the celebrant, staff, and volunteers. So they look for stability."The stories shared are further proof that the American Catholic Church appears to be trending in a more traditional way, even as some bishops work to restrict the Latin Mass and discourage reverent practices such as kneeling and receiving the Blessed Sacrament on the tongue (a historical practice that is protected by canon law).
While some bishops may be keen to stamp out reverence and tradition, some prelates and clergy are embracing them.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, for example, recently promoted kneeling for Communion and announced that he will be launching a project aimed at establishing more reverent liturgical practices, as LifeSiteNews recently reported.
Furthermore, Bishop Earl Fernandes of the Diocese of Columbus recently criticized guitar music and liturgical dancing in Masses and shared how he attended the Traditional Latin Mass a child. Fernandes, who also offered the Latin Mass as a pastor, highlighted the need for silence and reverence at Mass in keeping with the need for “Christocentric” worship, as LifeSiteNews recently reported.
“Most of them are young,” he previously said of the attendees at TLM. “They’re looking for reverence and beauty, a sense of transcendence, and to be connected to their parents and grandparents, the generations of faith.”
Not coincidentally, the diocese has experienced tremendous growth in the number of seminarians since the prelate took over the diocese in 2022.
Furthermore, a nationwide survey of Catholic priests found that most new priests, those ordained after 2020, consider themselves “conservative” or “orthodox,” while there are fewer and fewer “progressive” priests, as LifeSiteNews previously reported.
“Simply put, the portion of new priests who see themselves as politically ‘liberal’ or theologically ‘progressive’ has been steadily declining since the Second Vatican Council and has now all but vanished,” the report from the Catholic University of America stated.
