Paradise Lost or Found?
Fort Wayne’s Catholics Part Ways Over Liturgy and Politics
Jim Didier grew up as the eldest of 12 children in a devout Roman Catholic family whose roots in Fort Wayne, Indiana, date to the mid-1800s. Now 75, he was a teenager when the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) transformed liturgical practice in the Church. Musical programs embraced contemporary styles. Local languages replaced Latin in the Mass. Broadly, the Church tried to make its rituals and revelation more accessible. Coming of age in the 1960s, Didier experienced these reforms as a liberation.
“I grew up with the pomp and circumstance and smells and bells,” he says. But after the Second Vatican Council, commonly known as Vatican II, “the traditional Latin church that we grew up with in the 1950s and 1960s was no more—to the chagrin of many, but to the joy and kind of cosmic release of others. And I was the latter.”
Didier’s parents were faithful, “fairly conservative” Catholics who accepted the reforms without much angst. They just “went to Church and choir and worked hard and raised us to be good, moral, spiritual people,” he says. Most of his siblings still live in the Fort Wayne area and are still practicing Catholics.
Along with Vatican II, a professor at the University of St. Francis, in Fort Wayne, was pivotal to forming Didier’s adult relationship to the Church. “We called him ‘the mind melter,’” he says of Dr. Earl Kumfer, now an emeritus professor of philosophy and theology at St. Francis. Didier took Dr. Kumfer’s undergraduate class on the philosophy of religion, and it “truly altered the course of my life.” The professor “took my little foundation and threw a stick of dynamite in the middle of it and blew it to smithereens,” Didier says.
Yet Didier’s move away from Catholic traditionalism never led him to leave the Church. He has missed only a few Masses in his life, always due to illness. And he has been deeply involved in the life of his current parish—Most Precious Blood, on the edge of downtown Fort Wayne—since 1980.
Most Precious Blood was built in 1897 to serve the area’s rapidly growing population of German and Irish immigrants. It added a school the following year. Didier taught math and religion there for nine years, and he was the church’s music director from 1992 to 2021, with a two-year hiatus in the late 1990s. He returned as interim director in 2024.
The Pushback to Vatican II
Jim Didier’s story is familiar among Catholics who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. But younger, practicing Catholics tend to tell a very different story. They’re more conservative in general, both in their political orientation and their liturgical preferences. And their relationship to Vatican II is more about repairing its perceived harms than celebrating its reforms.
For example, a 2022 survey of more than 10,000 priests found that nearly 70 percent of those ordained between 1965 and 1969 self-identified as somewhat or very progressive. The cohort ordained between 2015 and 2019 was the exact opposite: Nearly 70 percent self-identified as either somewhat or very conservative. A majority of the rest identified as centrist. Less than 10 percent identified as any variety of progressive.
The shift is similar among the laity. The percentage of adult Americans who identify as Catholic has remained relatively stable for decades. The share was about 24 percent in the mid-2000s but fell to 20 percent in 2014 and has remained steadily there through 2024. But this surface stability disguises some profound changes.
Most notably, contemporary Catholics of all ages are much less likely to attend church regularly. A survey measuring the frequency of mass attendance between 1970 and 2021, for example, found that 55 percent of self-identified Catholics attended church weekly in 1970. By 2021, only 17 percent attended weekly.
So Catholic identity is holding steady, but the type of people who show up faithfully for Mass has changed. And, for many of the faithful, reversing the liturgical reforms of Vatican II is a top priority.
Mass as "Another Dimension"
Nicole and Randy Carey are prime examples. The couple and their 10 children faithfully attend Our Lady of Good Hope (or “Our Lady”), a parish located on Fort Wayne’s northeast side. Four of the children attend its school, which enrolls about 150 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.
The Careys began attending Our Lady soon after the onset of the COVID pandemic. Tensions with the pastor of their former church over its masking policy were the tipping point. But they had felt for years that “God was calling [them] somewhere else.”
One thing they appreciated immediately about Our Lady of Good Hope was that the priest didn’t ask congregants to do the sign of peace—i.e., take a moment to greet each other with a handshake or friendly nod—during Mass. For the Careys, the sign of peace detracts from the sense of awe and reverence that should define the service.
They believe the liturgy should create a space and time clearly set apart from the world. The style they prefer, called the Latin Mass, is defined by not only the use of Latin but by greater formality in general. For example, it features elaborate vestments on the clergy and choral singing (versus congregational singing). Modern liturgical styles are too “Protestant,” they believe, meaning too concerned with accessibility rather than focusing on worship.
“As Catholics, no matter what church we’re going to, we’re searching for the truth,” says Randy. “In the Latin Mass, it just seems like there are more truths being told—or shown.”
This liturgy appeals to their children because “it’s comforting for them to go into church and be almost in another dimension. Because it’s so different from the outside world,” Nicole says. “It’s a place of peace and quiet.”
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the Church’s restriction on the number of churches in a diocese that can offer the Latin Mass without permission from the Vatican and their bishop. Pope Francis restored the restriction in 2021.
A 2021 Pew poll found that 65 percent of U.S. Catholics had heard “nothing at all” about Pope Francis’ decision to restrict the Latin Mass. The Catholics who attended Mass at least weekly were most aware of it. Within that group, 29 percent opposed the restriction—versus only 12 percent of all US Catholics. There was also a sharp political divide, with 20 percent of Republicans opposing it versus only 6 percent of Democrats.
Sorting by Liturgy
Our Lady doesn’t offer a full Latin Mass, but it has a reputation as the most conservative Catholic church in Fort Wayne. Its pastor, Father Royce Gregerson, age 37, incorporates some elements of the Latin Mass—like heavy use of incense—during the early Sunday service.
Our Lady was founded in 1969 as a daughter church of St. Charles Catholic Church, which was founded in 1953. Together, the two churches symbolize the rapid suburbanization of American cities after World War II. St. Charles is about five miles northeast of downtown Fort Wayne, and Our Lady is about three miles north of St. Charles. About 1,200 people (in total) attend its three weekend Masses.
Just as Most Precious Blood was built to serve the influx of European immigrants to Fort Wayne’s urban core around the turn of the twentieth century, Our Lady was built to serve migrants to the towns and suburbs north of the city in the century’s later decades. Those suburbs are among the most Republican parts of a very Republican county. Donald Trump won about 55 percent of Allen County’s vote in both 2020 and 2024.
A key difference from the earlier era is that, with the spread of interstates and suburbs in the later twentieth century, parish boundaries lost most of their meaning. Most Precious Blood, built near Fort Wayne’s center, was very much a neighborhood church in the early twentieth century, and it remains so to some extent. Jim Didier, for example, lives within the parish boundaries.
By contrast, the Careys drive about 20 minutes each way—past several other options—to attend Our Lady. And that’s typical among the church’s members. Fr. Gregerson says that sorting by liturgical preference began to accelerate in the mid-2010s, driven in large part by Catholic media focusing on Pope Benedict lifting the restriction on the Latin Mass in 2007.
The Careys also regularly drive to a parish with a full Latin Mass located on Fort Wayne’s south side, even farther from their home than Our Lady. The family’s regular trek to the opposite side of town teaches children that “Mass is a sacrifice, not a convenience.” Nicole says, “We have a parish just five minutes down the road that’s convenient. But we don’t want to [prioritize] convenience.”
Within the laity, the preference for traditional worship styles is made visible by the rising number of female worshippers who “veil”—i.e., wear a head covering, usually made of silk or lace—at Mass. The practice fell out of fashion after Vatican II but has been revived by younger Catholic women. One veil-maker told The Free Press that orders have spiked over the past decade, from about 60 a month to an average of 900 per month.
“When I step into church, I put my veil on, and that brings me to a prayerful mindset,” says Ashley Morse, who attends St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Fort Wayne. Her four-year-old daughter also veils, along with about 10 percent of the women in the congregation (by Morse’s estimate). “The way it drapes—it almost has blinders on it, so that your focus is on one thing, looking up at the tabernacle and the altar and being present.”
A Smaller But Politically Mighty Church
In an interview published in 1997, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict in 2005, said that the Church might be entering an era where it “will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live in an intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world—that let God in.”
Pope Benedict wrote about this idea often. Called “the Benedict option,” it is popular among Catholics who believe that the hard truths and ancient rituals of traditional Catholicism might well lead to a smaller Church—and that this price is well worth paying. If the Church stays true to its calling, after all, secularized Westerners might eventually rediscover Christianity “as the answer they have always been looking for,” Pope Benedict once wrote.
A paradox of the purifying trend within the Church is that, even as the number of people in the pews has declined, the Church’s political influence has increased. The GOP, at least, has found in the Church the answer it had been looking for.
The anchor of President Donald Trump’s winning coalitions was an alliance of Catholics and evangelicals. He won 52 percent of Catholics’ votes (and about 80 percent of the evangelical vote) in 2016. Trump and President Joe Biden (a Catholic) split their vote almost evenly in 2020, 50 percent versus 49 percent, respectively.
But in 2024, Trump’s margin among Catholics spiked to 18 percent: He won 58 percent of their vote to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 40 percent. That outcome accelerated a decades-long shift among Catholic voters, who were a bedrock of the Democrats’ New Deal coalition in the 1930s and its civil rights coalition in the 1960s. Since abortion became a central issue in U.S. politics in the 1980s, however, the Catholic vote has moved steadily toward the GOP.
It is telling, for example, that Donald Trump’s vice president, J.D. Vance, converted to Catholicism in 2019. Vance once explained that one thing he likes about Catholicism is that it is “just really old.” His politics are infused with a deeply anti-modern, traditionalist Catholicism. The same is true of some current U.S. Supreme Court members. Six of the nine justices are practicing Catholics, including Chief Justice John Roberts and the Court’s two most right-wing members, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
Immigration Is Not a "Minor Issue"
The future of the Catholic Church in the United States is an open question. One possibility is that it will continue becoming a smaller, more conservative institution with immense political influence. That path seems likely from the current perspective. But in the mid-1960s, when many young people felt liberated by Vatican II’s reforms, more openness and liberalism seemed like the Church’s certain future. The plot has taken a very different twist.
The ongoing impact of immigration is a great unknown. Donald Trump made it central to his presidential campaign in 2024, and his victory confirmed its power to shape public opinion and motivate voters. But it can cut both ways. Like Most Precious Blood, many of the parishes in urban centers were built to serve immigrant communities. And Church thinkers have produced a long, distinguished history of social teachings around welcoming strangers, caring for the poor, and preferring “the least of these.” So immigration could hardly be more central to the Church’s history and identity.
Abortion has eclipsed teachings about the poor among the most influential Catholics in recent U.S. politics. And those voices have driven the shift among Catholics toward the Republican Party. But, historically, the Church’s teachings about the dispossessed have also had a transformative power.
Fr. Gregerson is a case in point. He served in a largely Hispanic parish—St. John the Evangelist in nearby Goshen, Indiana—for about seven years before coming to Our Lady. A majority of St. John’s adult parishioners were undocumented immigrants. Our Lady’s relatively affluent, mostly white congregation is a world apart from St. John, where “it always felt like [they] were in an existential battle for survival.”
Fr. Gregerson is a social conservative, but becoming friends with—and being pastor to—scores of immigrants “made [him] think very differently” about that issue. He now identifies as center-left on immigration.
Even so, when he came to Our Lady in the summer of 2024—at a moment when immigration was a defining issue in political debates—he “totally ignored it.” He was too new to have earned people’s trust and to be able to share what the Church teaches on the subject. “We’re going to talk about this, but we can’t do so now.”
Yet some Catholics have pushed back on the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric. Most notably, in early February 2025, Pope Francis wrote a letter to the U.S. bishops in response to the “delicate moment that you are living as Pastors of the People of God.”
In his letter, Pope Francis noted that he was following closely “the major crisis that is taking place” in the United States regarding immigration policy. “This is not a minor issue: an authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized. The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all . . . welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable.”
Destination Unknown
Immigration looks to be a major issue globally for the foreseeable future, and the focus on it might plant the seeds of a progressive resurgence rooted in the Church’s social teachings. But it is far too soon to know how it will play out. Fifty years ago, after all, abortion barely registered as a political issue among evangelicals. Yet it would soon be the defining issue of the conservative evangelical/Catholic alliance that has reshaped American politics for more than four decades.
What is clear for the moment is that in liberal-leaning congregations, parishioners are likely to hear some variation on Pope Francis’ plea for the Church to extend love and “dignified treatment” to all people. Meanwhile, parishioners in conservative congregations are more likely to hear about the dignity of life as summed up in the abortion issue.
The divide isn’t just about what is explicitly said. It’s about what isn’t said—and, often, it’s also about the church’s liturgical practices.
Trying to bridge these divides and silences can seem nearly futile. Jim Didier, for example, says that when he gets together with his (mostly conservative) family, “there’s not a lot of discussion” of flashpoint social issues. “We just stay away from it. You’re entitled to your opinion. I understand you have a story, and there’s a reason why you got where you are. So we pretty much just treat each other with kindness and leave the politics and religion out of it.”
If the past is any guide, the Church’s future will depend in large part on how, and if, these silences and differences are overcome. The post-Vatican II decades have mostly been a story of rising traditionalism and widening divides over liturgy and politics. What plot twists are coming—and how will they reshape the Church—God only knows.
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