Tradition and Truth: Why Reverence Strengthens Eucharistic Faith
Empirical research confirms what tradition has always taught: reverence strengthens belief, while dissent poisons it.
A newly published study in the Catholic Social Science Review has provided empirical evidence for a reality that Catholics through the centuries have instinctively known: reverent worship deepens faith. Natalie A. Lindemann, a psychologist at William Paterson University, surveyed over 800 American Catholics and discovered that traditional parish practices strongly predict belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
This finding matters because the wider context is bleak. Survey after survey has shown that only a minority of U.S. Catholics affirm the Church’s central teaching that the consecrated host is no mere symbol, but the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. If the Eucharist is, as Vatican II declared, “the source and summit of the Christian life,” then disbelief at the parish level signals a crisis at the very heart of Catholicism.
Lindemann’s research points to a way forward. She found that Catholics are significantly more likely to affirm Eucharistic doctrine when their parishes uphold practices of reverence. Eucharistic Adoration, the public witness of genuflection before the tabernacle, the ringing of consecration bells at Mass, and the experience of the Traditional Latin Mass all stand out as powerful predictors of belief in the Real Presence. The conclusion is unmistakable. Belief is not maintained by catechesis alone but by the visible and embodied signs of worship that shape the imagination and heart. As Lindemann herself observes, parish practices influence what people believe.
At this point one can only hope the bishops, or at least some bishops, or indeed any bishops, will take notice. What the study has demonstrated with data is what countless ordinary Catholics have long recognised through instinct and fidelity: reverence nourishes belief, and irreverence starves it.
The logic here is not complicated. When the faith is taught with clarity and confidence, it is believed. When the faith is treated as if it were a set of optional opinions, belief collapses. Every Catholic must therefore be committed to rooting out dissent and refusing to give it oxygen. Dissent is not an enrichment of the Church’s life. It is not another perspective that should be welcomed into synodal dialogue. It is poison. It corrodes belief, destroys unity, and hollows out the Church from within.
Pope Benedict XVI expressed the matter with precision when addressing the bishops of England and Wales in 2010:
“In a social milieu that encourages the expression of a variety of opinions on every question that arises, it is important to recognize dissent for what it is, and not to mistake it for a mature contribution to a balanced and wide-ranging debate. It is the truth revealed through Scripture and Tradition and articulated by the Church’s Magisterium that sets us free. Cardinal Newman realized this, and he left us an outstanding example of faithfulness to revealed truth by following that ‘kindly light’ wherever it led him, even at considerable personal cost.”
That is the model we need today. Bishops must recover the courage to silence error and to defend truth with the same fidelity Newman exemplified.
The timing of Lindemann’s study is providential. The U.S. bishops are in the midst of their National Eucharistic Revival, a project meant to rekindle devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. Yet this revival will fail if it is reduced to slogans, conferences, or promotional material. Without a recovery of reverent worship and the rejection of corrosive dissent, it will be a revival in name only.
The Church has always known that the senses matter in shaping the soul. God Himself, in the Incarnation, chose to sanctify us not by abstract ideas but through flesh, gesture, sign, and sacrament. Reverence is not a cosmetic option. It is the very pedagogy of faith.
Empirical research has now confirmed what tradition and the saints have always taught. When we kneel, adore, and worship with awe, we learn to believe. If Catholics are to profess the truth of the Eucharist, parishes must embody that truth visibly and tangibly. And if bishops are serious about revival, they must abandon the pretence that dissent has value, recover the courage to defend orthodoxy without compromise, and restore reverence to the heart of Catholic life.
Mystery is very important because it arouses our attention and draws us into a world beyond what we see, hear, smell, taste or touch. Sadly, the use off the vernacular in the celebration of the Holy Mass, instead of enabling deeper participation in the Sacred Liturgy caused its mystery to be reduced and even eliminated. Familiarity breeds contempt. The Sacred Liturgy, as one writer put it, has been vandalized by bishops and priests who view the Holy Mass as theirs to do with it what they want by adding and subtracting bits and pieces of their own to it. This has seriously diminished the reverence and solemnity that the celebration of the Holy Mass deserves. The Holy Mass belongs to Jesus - it is His Mass. But many bishops and clergy view it as if it were theirs and treat it as something to be finished quickly so the people, as I heard a priest say, "aren't kept too long." The implication is that the Holy Mass isn't worth very much of our time. The Catholic maxim of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi, Lex Agendi helps us understand why the lack of reverence and solemnity afforded to the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass today, especially in the celebration of the Novus Ordo, reflects a Faith that has become so watered down and demystified by many clergy and laity. This maxim teaches us that as we worship so we believe, and as we believe so we live, and as we act. When the act of worship is deprived of its solemnity and the honour due to God's Word and Real Presence our Faith becomes weakened, our life becomes a chore, and our actions become selfish. The Catholic Faith cannot be renewed unless the the reverence, solemnity, and mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is restored.
Consistent with my experience.