Transcript

You you you.

Just trying to do what we can to keep it beautiful until his headstone arrives.

So we have it all designed and ordered and ready to go, and I actually bought the plot right next to him.

So we're going to have a monument here with our name, and then the verse that’s kind of been our motto is Job 1:21: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

I think I've bought him more flowers than he's bought me.

At this point in traditional Catholicism, I see that the end all be all is not this earth.

It is the world to come for myself and the kids that really, that's our goal.

Their idea of eternity, it smacks them in the middle of the eyes every day because that's where their dad is.

I mean.

Not to make everything about death, but this life is not what we were created for.

I don't go because I'll be one.

I win.

You know, three or so years ago, just going to Mass and sensing that, okay, is this it?

Is there something more?

And seeing our children hit the age where the influence.

Of Michael, and I was still important, but the influence of the people that they were around was going to be almost more important.

My daughter was 11 at the time, entering pre-teen years, and really looking around and saying she doesn't have any friends that are Catholic.

Okay, she's in religious education, but she's the only one who knows her Hail Mary.

You know, that’s great.

A crowd like this might make you think that all is well in seminaries in the United States and that all is well with youth in the Catholic Church.

But this is St. Joseph's Seminary.

On any other day, clear evidence of a dire priest shortage in the United States, and most experts fear it will get worse as current priests age and fewer young people enter the seminary.

Changing values are part of the reason; only 10% of Catholics under the age of 30 say they go to Mass regularly.

You know the proposal of Vatican II was to make the Mass more accessible, and that meant, of course, making the doctrine concerning what the Mass is more accessible.

But we've had the exact opposite.

In 1980, a ratio of nearly 2,000 Catholics to each priest; by 2015, 3,000 to one.

But here in San Bernardino, it's 7,000 parishioners to each priest.

Kitsky and one other priest are in charge of seven churches in the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

Amen.

There used to be a time when 14 priests covered these seven churches.

Sir, exactly, is that the old model?

Yeah, it's not only maybe not the old model; it wouldn't be the old model, but it's the old reality.

Do you worry about that?

Definitely, yes, we obviously need more priests.

By one estimate, the current marriage rate is at its lowest point in a century and is dropping.

Every 13 seconds, someone in America gets divorced.

That equates to almost 25 million divorces a year.

There are so many variables as to what causes depression, but such a giant number of people suffer from depression.

If I'm being honest, I think it's going to get worse.

No one can tolerate being alone for any length of time.

We can't maintain our own sanity without continual feedback from other people.

The rise in suicides was also seen across all races, ages, genders, and ethnicities.

Underneath everything in your life, there's that thing, that empty, forever empty.

You know what I'm talking about?

Yes.

Yes, were you raised Catholic?

I was raised Catholic, and you were an altar boy, right?

You know that's what you do; you don't have a choice.

Oh, I've only gone to Catholic schools: Jesuit high school, Jesuit college, Catholic elementary school.

Were you an altar boy?

Yeah, I was an altar boy too.

Oh, you were raised Catholic, right?

I was raised Catholic.

Come on back, Bill.

Matthew 6:9 says, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

So, you went to Catholic school when you were young.

Oh yeah, I wanted to be a priest.

Did you really?

Yeah, I loved it.

I loved the Church.

I loved the idea of it.

I loved the smell of the incense.

I loved the whole idea of it.

My grandfather was very religious, so I used to go to Mass with him at 6:00 or 6:45 in the morning and serve Mass.

Life begins at conception; that's the Church's judgment.

I accept it in my personal life, but I refuse to impose it on equally about Christians, Muslims, and Jews.

I just refuse to impose that on others.

I grew up Catholic.

I don't go to Church anymore.

There's a part in Church where the priest says, Peace be with you, and for many, many years, we all said, Very good.

You still go to Church?

I don't go.

I try to go back.

When I was out in L.A. and I was kind of struggling for a bit, I went to Church for a while, but there's a band there now, and you have to hold hands with people through the whole Mass.

Now, this is too much for me.

I want the old way.

I want to hang out with the nuns.

That was my favorite type of Mass in the grotto, and just straight up, just Mass.

Mass.

And I remember as a child, I received my first communion kneeling on the tongue.

The Mass was in Latin; there was solemnity around it.

Now, what do we have?

We have a free-for-all in the sanctuary.

You know, we have the casual distribution of Holy Communion.

In fact, some priests get annoyed if people kneel.

And you know, the doctrine is taught not simply by what teachers and catechists say, but how the priests and the liturgy communicate the message.

I mean everything that we were doing in life is on the table to examine, and that included where we were going to Mass and how we were living our faith, especially.

Do you need help marking your missile?

No. Do you have it marked already?

Mm-hmm.

Look at you.

Teenager, now I know at some point it's out of my hands, and it's their choice, and it's their decision.

But to walk my children into heaven, however I can, is the number one priority of my life.

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

Amen.

Emite lucem tuam et veritatem tuam et semed et exerunt et abexerunt in modum sanctum tuam et in tabernacula tua et in tribulata Tarii Dei.

A dein quiletifica juventud de meam.

Confiteba tibi in citeta, Deus, Deus meus.

Quare tristissis anima mea?

Quare conturbas mea?

Spera in Deo, porne amado, confitebile Dei salutare vultus mea, Deus meus.

The prayers at the foot of the altar are one of the most beautiful features of the traditional Latin Mass because you start slowly and carefully, and you prepare yourself for the ascent up the holy mountain.

There's a sense there of the priest begging to be worthy to take on his priestly role in persona Christi, and therefore all the rest of us who are watching that are also given a chance to wake up to what we're doing, to catch up with what we're doing in a way to slow down.

We need a period of preparation, a period of transition that takes us from secular life to this timeless domain of the sacred.

The first impression for some people isn't always a positive one because it's so different.

It's so different from anything they experience, not only going to the ordinary form of the Mass, but just anything they experience in life is so unlike the Latin Mass that they really just don't know what to think.

It was barely audible; the people didn't give any responses, and I was thoroughly confused the entire time.

I didn't even know it had started until ten minutes in.

I mean, I was sitting there; I didn't realize that it was just, you know, the priest was at the foot of the altar saying the prayers quietly.

I was way back in the back of the church; I didn't even realize it.

And here I am, 38 weeks pregnant.

I was in jeans, not even just like pants, just jeans.

This is a cardigan, you know, and no veil because I was like, I had no idea what's happening.

And we had gotten there earlier for confession, so like expecting behavior of our small children for like three hours.

There were times where we were like, If you make one more noise, I don't know what we did.

I don't know what else.

We made it.

It was crazy.

We came back, we kept going.

I was studying theology at Boston College.

I was getting a PhD in Catholic theology, and I just assumed that the only difference between the liturgy before Vatican II and after was that they had translated it into English.

I was getting a PhD in theology, and I was under that impression.

If you look at the Order of Mass, you'll see a psalm at the beginning, Psalm 42. At the beginning, you'll see a couple of psalms in the offertory.

You know, you see psalm verses quoted around the time of the priest's communion.

It's shot through with Sacred Scripture, with the Word of God.

You have an obligatory set of propers, usually from the psalms, and all of those are always going to be read or sung.

It ends with the prologue of the Gospel of John, which is a summation of the whole of divine revelation.

It's a kind of Gospel of the Gospels.

So there's this moment of basking in an awareness of what is it that we've just participated in and why is it so significant.

There's a gentle entry into worship and a gentle departure from it that is much more natural and much more helpful.

If there's anything official in music in the Church, it's Gregorian chant.

It's the only thing that is non-negotiable.

Gregorian chant, it's very easy.

For an accomplished choir, but even for intermediate or beginning choir, it is quite possible with ease to program ten years of church music without repeating a Mass on Sunday.

So by training, I'm a seminary professor, and that's what I did for a good chunk of my life as a priest.

Twenty-five years a priest, and fifteen of those years were in seminary formation.

So his Eminence, of course, loves and celebrates the Extraordinary Form, but when he arrived in St. Louis as the Ordinary in 2004, he was already under the impression that I celebrated the Extraordinary Form.

So there were young men in the seminary who were interested in learning the Extraordinary Form, and I was the Director of Sacred Liturgy.

He was sending them to me, and I finally had to say to him in one of our weekly meetings, I said, Your Grace, I don't celebrate the Extraordinary Form.

And, Oh, Father Morris, you need to learn.

And I said, Yes.

And so I met two seminarians there who themselves were attached to the Traditional Mass, so they trained me.

They got me over my fears of my bad Latin; it was really, really bad.

I was embarrassed; I couldn't memorize things, but it was Low Mass.

I made lots of mistakes, and I remember both of us leaving, and I just—I wept.

I wept.

I mean, it was not tears the whole night long; it wasn't just a—I wept almost to the degree I wept when I was ordained.

It felt—it was just overwhelming to me how beautiful it was.

It was so simple, so profound.

With all the mistakes, there was still something very natural to it, and I realized that I was actually able to pray.

It was a Low Mass, and maybe twenty-five people were there, and I was covered with sweat.

I was working so hard and terrified, and the people afterwards said it was life-changing for them.

They knew I was sweating bullets, and they said that's what should happen when you stand before the throne of mercy and the judgment seat when you're offering the supreme sacrifice.

I notice this reverence, I notice this participation, and then the most important thing I would say I noticed is the coherence.

I have very poor Latin to read, to speak, to understand, and yet the Mass made much more sense in the Traditional Latin Mass, where I don't speak the language, than in the English Mass, where I do.

We were rushed.

We were downtown in Manhattan.

It was pouring down rain.

We got in, we knelt down, and then the traditional Latin Mass was a low Mass, and it was over.

And then we were briskly driven to LaGuardia, and it was such a flash.

You know, it didn't really rock me, but I already knew enough by then to recognize the antiquity of the traditional Latin Mass, so I was eager to go back to another one.

I am drawn to the traditional Latin Mass because it feels as though the transcendence, the presence of heaven on earth, but just the majesty of God and the otherness of the worship of the angels and the saints in glory.

To have the whole community and the priest facing not just the altar, you know, but heaven, and to have that priest representing us as mediator offering sacrifice.

I am still subjectively more familiar and at home with the Novus Ordo, but objectively, intellectually, but also spiritually drawn to the traditional Latin Mass.

I think in part precisely because it puts me in my place.

There was a family I knew that didn't like the Latin Mass.

We had both, of course, in that parish, and so they wouldn't come to the Latin Mass.

And a light bulb went off in the mother's mind.

At one point, she has four children and a husband, and she said, It's about control.

I realize now that in the Novus Ordo, I'm in control, or the priest is in control, or we are in control of the liturgy.

But in the Latin Mass, I don't know what's going on a lot of the time, and it's clear that I'm not in control.

But there is someone in control because it is so perfect.

The rubrics and the execution of the liturgy help me to believe that there is someone in control of the Church, and it's not me.

There was a haughtiness to how I preside it: 'I do it better than this guy, so I'm going to be the one to do it for everybody,' and it's really about me.

And I want to make sure, again, eye contact and the homily is well written and everything's okay.

Now it's, I go up to the altar of the Lord and I ask that the Lord forgive me of my sins, and I'm aware of my unworthiness and I shouldn't be here.

And then when I kiss the altar again, I'm aware, and it tells me everything that I'm supposed to do.

So it's nothing about me and everything about God.

The priest.

Whispers the words of consecration over the host, over the chalice, and then the bell pierces the silence.

You see the host and you see the chalice lifted up, and for me, that is the moment in the Mass where I feel in my heart and in my gut Jesus is here and He died for me.

We're incarnational people; we learn by the actions that we do.

And so in the Latin Mass, if you bring your five-year-old or your seven-year-old or your nine-year-old there, and they have to kneel down and receive, they're going to know this isn't just blessed bread.

They're going to know this is somebody, not something.

Kids couldn't see anything, and half the Mass is silent, and I had no idea what's going on.

I thought, is my veil staying on?

And Maximilian, who was eight at the time, said, Mom, does God like that?

And asked more.

I said, What do you think?

He goes, Well, I felt Him there.

The Latin phrase, lex orandi, lex credendi, means there's no way we will believe rightly if we don't worship rightly.

The two support each other, but it begins with the liturgy.

So the way we worship is the way we believe.

There's no question about that.

Mother Teresa often said, If your prayer life is right, the rest of your life will be perfectly all right.

By prayer life, she meant interior prayer, but also liturgical prayer.

If your prayer life is authentic and orthodox, then everything else will be orthodox.

So our first experience again was mid-July of 2019, and then September 13th, it's Friday the 13th.

He was at work in a meeting, and he had a seizure.

I hands down thought it was stress; we had just moved.

He had just moved brokerage firms.

We were supposed to be adopting a baby in just six weeks after that.

That weekend, I was supposed to go out and buy a crib, and the ER doctor came back and said that they found a mass on his brain.

And they said the word glioblastoma, and I had never heard that word before in my life.

I did what anybody does, and I Googled it.

The first thing that comes up is glioblastoma life expectancy: 12 months.

And so I just lost it on the hospital floor hallway.

I mean, this beautiful man who was sitting in bed, and he was laughing, and he's like, Oh no, everything will be fine.

And that was just his, you know, everything was an adventure.

Everything was going to be fine, Daddy!

Dad, I love you so much!

Merry Christmas!

Can we play dolls together?

I would love to play dolls with you.

I'm not taking a picture.

Why?

I'm taking a video.

14 years.

Love you, love you.

I'm still unpacking it.

I'm still just unpacking that time of picnics every night with the kids up in the bedroom with me, putting my feet on the hospital bed and reading a book for an hour while the kids ate and played and Michael slept.

And a rosary every night, and to take care of him, honor him for all the times that I didn't. Michael was such a humble servant man that oftentimes when I said, Let's go right, we'd go right, even if going left was better.

It was my turn to follow him, and I know that if I told him to stay, that he would have hung on.

So we just followed him.

And after Michael died, being there was a refuge from this crazy, scary world, and it's the place I can just lay the cross down for a little bit.

Gosh, I don't know.

I ask the kids, I say, Where would we be without this?

I don't know.

I think I just need this solid foundation.

That's what tradition is.

Tradition is another word for a solid foundation.

Thank you.

Avila, what should we meditate upon in this ministry?

We should meditate on how Jesus was so scared, and we can pray for comfort.

God's grace is promised you.

Do you see that?

What's that?

You have your scapular, a medal, and a rosary.

It's a miraculous medal and a rosary.

See, Mommy's wearing her scapular, and I have my miraculous medal, but you don't have your rosary.

But we just pray the rosary, so check, check, check, check.

We ask you for a rosary every day.

Okay.

Good night.

Love you so much.

I love you so much, okay?

Okay, good night.

Okay, now hug, hug.

Good night.

Good night.

Good night.

When that split second of judgment comes, what will it be like?

It will be an evaluation of ourselves just as we really are.

Then what are we really?

We are what we are not by our emotions, our feelings, our likes and dislikes, but by our choices.

Our judgment will be based not on our social position, but on the way we lived.

On the choices we made on the things we loved.

Thank you, thank you!

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

The Eucharist, transubstantiation is a diamond, and a diamond can be anywhere; it has the same value.

But when you place that diamond in a setting by someone who really knows how to create a proper setting, it allows the light to move through it.

It brings out certain features of it, but that setting is the liturgy, and it makes it sparkle.

It makes it shine.

It makes us appreciate the diamond, the value.

And I think when you dull that down, the diamond doesn't change; the diamond's always a diamond.

But you maybe don't appreciate it as much; maybe you don't see the qualities and the magnificence of that diamond.

And I think, you know, people who go back to the traditional Latin Mass, it's still the transubstantiated; it's still the Eucharist.

But we see it in a new setting, in a new light, and I think that does strengthen our faith.

It really does, in talking to listeners today.

As I do for three hours a day, it's people who are in their 20s and 30s, you know, raising families.

A commonality is, you know, how come nobody ever told me about this?

Why didn't I know about this?

And, you know, I can understand why, because it's like, in many ways, the best kept secret of the Catholic Church.

In an era of profound ambiguity—almost weaponized ambiguity, as others have said—with tradition comes clarity, and clarity produces, in somebody who's open to it, a change of heart.

If you have clarity, people have to make a decision.

Will I follow Jesus?

Will I follow the world?

What young people want when they go to a church is not to find more of the world.

We have a lot of the world.

I'm in the world, man; I see it a lot, okay?

What we want is to leave the world.

We want an experience that elevates us up to heaven, which you get in its fullest expression, I think, liturgically speaking, in the traditional Latin Mass.

I've gone through lots of Catholic cathedrals in Europe, and of course, they're stunning creations.

But I think that the Catholicism that's as sane as people can get—we need a metaphysic, a narrative metaphysic to hold us together, and it has to be predicated on something that's transcendent and absolute.

I was never an atheist; I was always an agnostic.

I always had a belief, but I never had like a connection.

Latin Mass gave me something where I felt connected.

That was my first inroad to Pio.

It was, okay, that Mass is an immersive experience.

He's fully involved.

His Mass was very different than other Masses that were performed.

Latin Mass affects me deeply, and because it's not being done to sell me on anything, it feels almost like I'm being let in on something very special.

I would also say that there's certain language where I don't need to know the words, yeah, which is what I feel when I watch Pio's Mass.

Yeah, I know what's going on; I feel it deeply.

It almost feels more powerful than when I know every single word.

It becomes too obvious, too rationalized, too, Hey everybody, look, here's what's going on.

What is it you get out of the Latin Mass?

It's opened my eyes to the tradition of the faith, you know, with St. Augustine, with Thomas Aquinas, with all of these great saints.

And then seeing that this Mass of the Roman Rite, the Latin Mass, has been a Mass for the past 1500 years, that all these great saints went to, they were saying the same Latin prayers.

It's just very beautiful.

You know, I feel very united.

And you walk into a Latin Mass, and imagine the ladies with the veil and the kids, and everybody's beautifully dressed, and everybody's quiet, like in fighting.

Like, if I learn a certain submission move and it always works, why would I not use that anymore and go with something else that maybe might not work?

No, I want to go with the best possible solution, and that's what I like.

I like authenticity.

I want to please Him; I don't need to please anybody else.

That's the guy I want to please.

Unless you experience a transcendent God in right worship, then you really are not drawn fully into the mystery.

I think that you will not stay unless you grow in that love for the Mass.

The Mass is everything for Catholics.

The goal of the liturgy is not to evangelize; the goal of the liturgy is to worship God.

But people are evangelized when they see that experience of God being worshipped.

We have atheists and Satanists and people who wandered into the church, and they may not know anything about the Catholic faith, but something draws them there because there's an experience of something bigger than themselves.

Today, the parish has over 2000 families and probably eight choirs, a religious order of 24 priests and brothers, and the church went from being the most broken church in the city of Chicago to being what was named the most beautiful church in America.

We judge a tree by its fruit, and I found that tree being the traditional liturgy.

And when we look at the numbers, who the church is filled with, and we see among traditional communities in places where the traditional Mass is being celebrated, we see a lot of young families, lots of baptisms, lots of conversions.

Why would we want to be anthropocentric and communal first and foremost, and not be theocentric and focus as a community upon the glory and the majesty of God?

Nothing will form a community that is tighter and more devout, and will become holy more than being God-centered.

It is when you kneel quietly and you watch a miracle take place.

When you forget about you, you're focused on a miracle.

That is the greatest peace that you are going to find here on Earth.

The way that I have been able to reorder my life as a woman and a mother has come from traditional Catholicism.

The way that my children have so much peace and joy, it's from traditional Catholicism.

It's not like I have Mass over here and I'm just going to the Latin Mass and my life is the same.

It is completely radically transformed every aspect of our lives.

It is a liturgy and a way of life that breeds incredible peace and freedom.

Oh, you're hurting me!

Don't be in the middle of the water.

Then what's your question?

My question is, what went so awry after Vatican II? T