While Our Lord promises us that until the close of the age the Catholic Church will not fall away, and that no matter what, the gates of Hell shall not prevail against her, I posit to you all that the Catholic Church is dying. No upright and professing Catholic will claim that the gates of Hell will prevail against the mystical bride of Christ. Yet it is apparent to any who has been Catholic long enough to say a full rosary that the Church is falling and is no longer in the glory which it once possessed.
There are many Catholics since the mid-20th century who are sure that the Church is in a heyday, a new Advent, a springtime, yet this is demonstrably false. The statistics make it more than clear: Mass attendance is down, Catholic marriages have decreased, vocations to the priesthood are plummeting, divorce rates are going up each year, and 70% of average weekly Mass-going Catholics in America no longer believe the Church’s infallible teaching that the Eucharist is Christ’s very body. If you had told this to a Catholic a mere one hundred years ago, they would not have believed you.
It is imperative that we ask and reflect on the question of exactly why this happened. What caused this? What caused the church that survived two thousand years, awful corruption, Muslim invasions, Eastern Schism, the Avignon Papacy, the Reformation, the French Revolution, and two World Wars to be rent asunder and start to fall? Many say this was caused by the reform of the liturgy, bad catechesis, or the Sexual Revolution. While all of these played a part, they are more generally described by one thing: a watering down of the faith.
In an attempt to open the doors of the Church to evangelize the modern world, the Catholic Church in the second half of the 20th century took steps to make the Catholic faith more accessible to the masses. While a noble cause, the implementation of this goal ended up changing the Catholic Church to something almost unrecognizable in the following decades.
In a general audience on November 26, 1969, Pope Paul VI spoke about the plan for the promulgation of the new rite of Mass. In doing so, he said that many of the riches of the Church were going to be lost, such as the use of the Latin language, and that “We will lose a great part of that stupendous and incomparable artistic and spiritual thing, the Gregorian chant,” but that it would all be made worth it by the conversion of the masses.
Not only did these splendors of Latin and chant essentially disappear but many churches were rendered less beautiful. High altars were removed, statues were taken down, large paintings and embroidering were painted over, and older vestments, chalices, and other vessels and objects were thrown away or put out of use for essentially no reason.
Doctrine and teachings were also watered down as Catholics weren’t taught about the reality of sin, the idea of an unworthy communion, the necessity of the Church for salvation, and heresy started to creep into many pulpits around the world.
Being in a position where we can start to look back on all that has taken place in the past 75 years we must ask ourselves: have the masses been converted? Unequivocally they have not. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who was a prelate at the Second Vatican Council, said that the changes made in the Church were part of “a senseless ecumenism that will not attract a single Protestant to the faith, but will cause countless Catholics to lose it.” Instead of the massive conversion and springtime that the Church was supposed to experience, we have witnessed a striking departure from the traditional Catholic faith and a growing hatred of the Church by the modern world. It is now almost a caricature of young people who were raised Catholic to receive their confirmation and then promptly apostatize and never return to Mass.
The “Church of the New Advent” which so many in the 70s, 80s, and 90s raved about has left us with a church that has been infiltrated by heretics, falling apart from the inside, and maligned by the world for pedophilia and a false understanding of historical events. We are at a point in Church history where Christendom has fallen, very few people believe the faith anymore, and the world stands around us watching us burn and chanting, “Death to Catholicism!”
Born and Raised to Jewish parents in New York City, Kai Breskin is a recent convert to the Catholic Faith. A member of the Boston College class of 2026, he is studying Political Science, Philosophy, and History. His intellectual passions include Christian theology, history, and liturgical study. His hobbies include sailing, playing the piano, and singing, with a specific focus in Gregorian Chant.
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