Why Young People Flood The Traditional Latin Mass: Archduke Eduard Habsburg

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**Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen** (0:57)
We brought our children for the first time. We don't tell you anything. Just let's go there and tell us afterwards your experience. My two eldest daughters said lots of good looking young men in the church. Latin Mass is very attractive to young men.

**Michael Knowles** (1:10)
Because the new Mass is girly. It's effeminate. It feels trivial and it feels weak. Is that too harsh?
An Austrian and an American walk into a studio and all we want to talk about is Latin. I am joined today by my friend, his Imperial and Royal Highness, Eduard of Austria, who you've met before when we had Eduard Habsburg on to talk about his previous book, The Habsburg Way. Now, he is on to talk about, dare I say, an even more exciting subject, the traditional Latin Mass. Eduard, thank you for being here.

**Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen** (1:48)
Thank you for hosting me.

**Michael Knowles** (1:50)
So I tell the audience a lot about how much I love the Latin Mass.
You obviously are quite a devotee of the Latin Mass. You've had some real firsthand experience around the Holy Sea as the Hungarian ambassador to the Holy Sea. Congratulations on your retirement after 10 years of service. The question that I get from the people who are a little curious, they say, why would I want to go to church in Latin? Why is it so important that I go hear the Mass in Latin? Why do you weird trads care so much about this dead language? What say you?

**Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen** (2:26)
Well, that's a long story. But the short version is, because this is the liturgy, that all our ancestors, all the great saints of the church, from Gregory the Great, via St. Teresa of Avila, via all the great saints, celebrated liturgy in this form. And I have to say, I understand the sentiment. Why should I go to a Latin Mass? I don't even understand what the priest says.
Because I, for 50 years, just went to our normal Mass today. And I grew up in this. I loved today's Mass. It shaped me. It made me the Catholic I am today. And twice I stumbled into a Latin Mass.
And that was both times rather catastrophic. Because I went in there without preparation, without explanation, and without an idea what was I'm going to experience. And I came out afterwards and said, this is the weirdest, I'm not going to say the word, that I've ever experienced in a church. Never again.

**Michael Knowles** (3:35)
Because it's funny you say that. A lot of people, myself included, will say we were raised in the modern liturgy. Sometimes it has acoustic guitars and all kinds of craziness.
But then when we found the Latin Mass, I said, this is it. I'm home. It clicked instantly. I loved it. You walk in and you say, actually, you know what? This is totally nuts and I have no use for it.

**Eduard Habsburg-Lothringen** (3:57)
Yes. I think that the majority of people, at least in Western Europe where I live, would react my way.
But I hear stories of people walking into one of these things and being blown away and saying, that's it. I never experienced it that way. For me, I tried it twice and I said, never again. Because it's very alien. It presses different buttons on your senses, in your ears, in your eyes. The priest looks away from you. You see mostly his back. He moves in a very ritualized way, like on rails. He has no choice, no improvisation. He never turns to you and says, the Lord be with you. But it's all in Latin and away from you. So it's alien. In a way, a friend once said, it's like if you have your walk in a park and then somebody takes you and puts you on the surface of the moon and says, have your walk here. So it can be very alien. And today's mass has sort of programmed us to expect a certain set of impressions, experiences, sounds and smells when you go to liturgy. And in the Latin Mass, some of these things are very different. So there is a lot of silence. There is a lot of silence. In fact, when I finally found my way to the Latin Mass while I was in Rome as ambassador, and kicking and screaming because my wife said, let's check that out. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no. You won't drag me to those crazy treads. No way, no more trouble. I don't want that. And so I still went. And I remember I was in my first Latin Mass, desperately trying to read along in the little brochure I had with a text and not understanding which part of the mass I was in.