Lagging Mass Attendance Solved - Archdiocese of Detroit Can Take a Lesson from St. Louis

In the Archdiocese of Detroit, restructuring is underway due to lagging Mass attendance. I've written about this before and suggested the solution is not combining parishes and continuing the modernization and secular accommodation, but a return to the mystery of the faith, which in one way is the Traditional (Tridentine) Latin Mass. 

Below is an article copied verbatim from Daily Mail that proves my point ... where attendance has tripled.

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The ornate Catholic church was on the brink of closing... until a priest came up with an extraordinary old-fashioned idea that made attendance boom

By NATASHA ANDERSON, US SENIOR NEWS REPORTER 

PUBLISHED: 13:28 EDT, 6 July 2026 | UPDATED: 13:48 EDT, 6 July 2026

An ornate Catholic church was on the brink of closure but now sees hundreds of faithful flock to its pews for Mass each week thanks to a priest's extraordinary idea.

St Francis de Sales Oratory was founded in 1867 by a group of German immigrants who settled in St Louis.

The gorgeous cathedral became a landmark in the midwestern city and for decades served parishioners of more than a dozen nationalities.

But as families started moving out to the suburbs, the church, dubbed the Cathedral of South St Louis, saw a massive drop in parishioners, the church website states.

St Francis de Sales was closed by the Archdiocese of St Louis in June 2005, and the church was forced to merge with another local parish.

St Francis de Sales Oratory in St Louis, Missouri is one of roughly 450 Catholic churches in the US that celebrates the traditional Latin Mass

A typical Sunday will see more than 700 people fill the pews of the cathedral to partake in a nearly two-hour long service where almost no English is spoken.

 The choir leads Gregorian chants, the priest faces the altar as he performs the liturgy and communion is distributed at a rail

The priest delivers the homily, or sermon, in English, but the rest of the Mass resembles a traditional ancient service.

The congregation typically sits in silence and female parishioners often wear veils as a symbol of reverence. St Francis does not have air conditioning and gets stuffy in summer - but even that does not deter worshippers, who cool themselves down with fans instead.

Membership at the church has tripled in the last six years, with the majority of parishioners being young families and Gen Z adults. 

Parishioners interviewed by the newspaper said that worshipping in Latin has helped them become more connected to their faith. 

'When everything was in English, I never had to think twice about what was going on,' 23-year-old parishioner Natalie Spain told the Post-Dispatch. 

She claims the 'mystery' of Latin service forced her to be more reverent.

'A lot of us are hungry for something that feels older and more solid,' echoed Philomena Wallace, 26. 'You have a way of worship that extends past the language. The meanings are not changing.'

Membership at the 159-year-old church has tripled in the last six years, with the majority of parishioners being young families and Gen Z adults

St Francis de Sales was scheduled to be torn down and sold in 2005, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke saved the cathedral by erecting it as an Oratory where Mass is strictly administered in Latin

St Francis de Sales, however, also appeals to Gen X, with one 49-year-old parishioner saying the service was like nothing he'd ever experienced before.

He and his wife, who first visited the church 14 years ago while on vacation from Florida, said it is the best place for 'spiritual nourishment.'

The couple ultimately bought a house in nearby St Francois County and relocated to Missouri with their three young sons.

Rising membership at St Francis de Sales mirrors a global trend in which Catholicism is seeing a resurgence amongst Gen Z.

Older adults make up the majority of Mass-goers, but data collected by the Barna Group last year found that Gen Z frequent services more regularly. 

Harvard University’s Cooperative Election Study also showed that the number of Gen Z Americans who identify as Catholic increased from 15 percent in 2022 to 21 percent the following year.

Several Catholic churches have gone viral on social media after receiving praise from so-called Catholic influencers.

St Joseph's Church in Manhattan's Greenwich Village neighborhood was even dubbed one of NYC's Hottest New Clubs after it emerged that queues of more than 100 people wait outside the parish ahead of Sunday service.

The Dogma of Extreme - SSPX vs Leo XIV's Vatican

15,000 people gathered in Écône, Switzerland, for the SSPX Ordination
of four new bishops. The size of the crowd is evidence.

In her "Forward Boldly" podcast, Christine Niles recently proclaimed that the SSPX's claim that the Novus Ordo (NO) Mass is "evil" was "extreme," and therefore, because it was "extreme," SSPX was wrong. Christine went on to explain SSPX's rationale for their "evil" claim. The claim centered on sins of omission, not commission. SSPX does not like the NO Mass because of what it leaves out of the TLM (Tridentine Mass). I agree with SSPX on this. But I had not thought of the sin of ignoring what was previously considered sacred and necessary as evil. SSPX points to a slippery slope. What do we eliminate next?  For hundreds of years, and I believe numerous popes, have proclaimed the TLM as sacred and necessary. Now Francis and Leo think it's wrong and should not be celebrated. To me that is extreme. 

I came into the church from Protestant Evangelicalism in 1998. One reason was that I could understand the NO, which was celebrated in my English vernacular. But since then, in my Catholic apologetic work and research, I have come to believe that the NO is a rebellion against the reverence of the traditional TLM, and that, by eliminating prayers and acts of reverence and by modern accommodation, it has become sacramentally vulgar...and therefore I have no problem with the SSPX's claim that it is evil. 

The NO is priest-centered, not God-centered; it does not respect the Eucharist liturgically (in 100 ways), and by the use of extraordinary ministers, and promoting communion in the hand. The NO is "versus populum" (facing the people) with the priest turning his back to God. This is the explicit expression of the logical fallacy "ad populum" (making accommodation to the people and the masses). Although I’m told "ad orientem" (the priest and people face God)  is not strictly forbidden in the NO, our “wonderful” new “Francis” bishop here in Detroit (Wiesenberger) has forbidden it. Some bishops are refusing to let us kneel to receive the body of our Lord. THESE are the EXTREMES. Christine Niles gets it wrong.

The claim of extremes should be directed to the NO and Francis and Leo’s objection to the TLM. But there are more extremes in the NO.

The use of the vernacular is not conducive to worship of God Almighty, when we have a liturgical language (Latin) that is not used anywhere in the secular world. The virtue of Latin is that,  unlike vernacular languages, Latin does not change. It's a "dead" language. Vernacular languages contribute to misunderstandings through linguistic and logical fallacies and thus are crucibles for heresies. I've said for years that Protestantism is the consequence of equivocations (misuse of the vernacular).

Compared to chant, the use of popular music is like fingernails on a chalkboard. 

I'll say nothing about how people dress and act in the NO vs the TLM. (Well, I guess I did say something.) Yes, the NO could be more reverent, but the tone of Vatican II (V2) and how it has been implemented in the NO promote shorts and flip-flops, indifference to the Eucharist and all things formerly held sacred. 

Vatican II, from which the NO evolved, is pastoral, not dogmatic or doctrinal.  No new doctrines were defined, nor was a heresy condemned. And yet, Francis and Leo and many bishops act as if V2 is dogmatic, and therefore treat the NO as dogma. But NOTHING out of V2 is dogmatic, so why are we pretending the secular, modernist NO is dogmatic? 

(see https://www.youtube.com/c/MassoftheAges)

I am disturbed by pundits incorrectly calling everything a pope does as "indefectible," which means the pope is unfailing, faultless, and incapable of defect or decay. Traditionis Custodes is not an ex cathedra infallible pronouncement. It was Francis's opinion, no doubt driven by wrongheaded (evil?) influences in the Vatican or his own ignorance of the TLM since he wasn't ordained until after V2 and may have never celebrated or even sat through a TLM. 

Consider this. Historically, Popes have issued documents (papal bulls) whereby slavery was authorized as acceptable. [c.f. Nicholas V's Dum Diversas (1452), Nicholas V's Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Alexander VI's Inter Caetera (1492).] Stop with the indefectibility heresy. Popes are sinners like the rest of us.  Stop conflating "indefectibility" with infallibility, wherein what has been rare (infallibility) becomes ubiquitous (indefectibility). Yes, you will try to parse the words. But it’s not convincing. Shall we start to enumerate past popes' foibles and sins to make the point? (c.f. the children of Alexander VI, Paul III, and Julius II)  Traditionis Custodes will soon be recanted as wrong.

Finally, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, who has been charged with writing much for Francis (and Leo?), is a disgrace, starting with his authorship as a priest of "Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing." Fernandez's writing of Laudato si is unreadable by anyone with a science background. I’ve tried three times, and my degree in physics makes the document a textbook example of cringe. Fernandez also authored Fiducia Supplicans, which has popularly been interpreted as approval of blessing homosexual unions, though Francis has backtracked that interpretation...and yet Fr. James Martin has done it with immunity. 

So, the Vatican is not always a credible source of what is right and wrong. As expected of any human institution, the Vatican, at times (and currently, I claim), bastardizes Jesus' prophecy that the Church would get everything right. I suppose the prophecy that the Church would fall in the last days is coming true. 

Critical thinking (comparing and contrasting) with history and truth sustained through the centuries is necessary. Do it. Use it.