Too often, the Catholic Mass in the modern Roman rite feels like a meeting. A well-meaning one, perhaps – but horizontal, flat and alarmingly un-mysterious. There’s handshaking. Folksy banter from the altar. Music that sounds like a leftover from a 1970s guitar retreat. It’s meant to be “engaging". It ends up being banal.
And people are walking away. Not just from the pews, but from the sense that what happens at Mass is sacred – something transcendent, something beautiful, something terrifying in the best possible sense. About a third of regular Mass-attending Catholics don't believe in the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist – the “source and summit” of the life of the Church – which is to say nothing of the majorities of Catholics in most countries who don’t even attend Mass.
