During my sabbatical this summer, I wrote several times about the tension between loving the parish I serve and longing for something more traditional. I didn't resolve the tension. I just named it. And I committed to staying.

This week, a bishop I respect made the opposite case.

Bishop Robert Mutsaerts of the Netherlands, speaking at the Catholic Identity Conference, told LifeSite that Catholics attending parishes with irreverent liturgies should stop trying to fix them. "If there's a bad Novus Ordo Mass, you can't improve those priests, I'm afraid. So just go anywhere else."

He continued: "I used to think, 'Support your own parish.' I'm not saying that anymore... because you might lose your faith there. Go somewhere where you think, 'This is right, this is authentic, this is true.'"

He's not wrong about everything. In fact, he's right about some important things.

What the Bishop Gets Right

Reverence matters. The desire for beautiful, reverent liturgy isn't snobbery or rigidity. It's a hunger for the sacred. People who long for silence, for chant, for incense, for the sense that something transcendent is happening - they're not being difficult. They're responding to something real. And this hunger is growing. Parishes need to pay attention.

Belonging matters. The bishop made a point about young people: "You need some encouragement from your parish community. You don't get it if you're 18 and all the rest of the parishioners are 80." He's right. Community isn't optional. If there's nowhere for young families to connect, nowhere for young adults to find peers walking the same path, the parish isn't fully alive.

I've seen what this looks like when it works. At the Oratory in St. Louis, where they celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, there are young families everywhere - not just at Mass, but lingering afterward for coffee and donuts, building friendships that extend through the week. That's not an accident. That's community. And it's magnetic.

Formation matters. A liturgy that teaches badly forms badly. A homily that never challenges forms comfort, not disciples. Parents who worry that their children are being malformed by what they experience at Mass aren't being paranoid. They're being responsible.

I understand why someone would hear all of this and conclude: just go. Find somewhere better. Protect your family. Feed your soul.

And for some people, in some situations, that may be the right call.

But I don't think it's the whole picture.

Who Stays for the 99?

Here's what I keep coming back to.

In the parable, the shepherd leaves the 99 to find the 1 who wandered off. But there's another way to read that situation: someone has to stay with the 99.

If everyone who cares about reverent liturgy leaves for the Latin Mass parish across town, who remains at the territorial parish? Who advocates for better? Who models what faithful Catholic life looks like for the family in the pew who doesn't know any different?

Not everyone can leave. Some people don't have a car. Some are homebound. Some have obligations - family, work, proximity - that tie them to a place. Some don't even know there's something better to long for.

If the people who do know leave, what happens to those who stay behind?

I think about that a lot.

The Pastor Who Wants to Change

Bishop Mutsaerts says you can't improve those priests. Maybe some priests, sure. But I know plenty of pastors who want to change things - who long for more reverent liturgy, better music, deeper formation - but who feel stuck.

Just a couple weeks ago, twenty seminarians stayed with us for Blessed Fulton Sheen's beatification. Over coffee, several of them talked about their desire to help their future parishes change - and their fear of what it will actually take to make it happen once they're assigned somewhere. They already see the resistance coming. They're already wondering if they'll have the support they need.

They inherited - or will inherit - a parish with decades of embedded habits. They have staff who resist. They have parishioners who complain at every adjustment. They're exhausted from managing conflict and wonder if it's worth the fight.

What those pastors need isn't for the faithful to leave. They need allies. They need patient advocates who stay, who build trust, who help make the case over time. They need people willing to do the slow, unglamorous work of cultural change.

This is one of the themes in my book, A Tale of Two Fathers. Real change in parishes - in any organization - doesn't happen overnight. It happens through relationships. Through trust earned over years. Through small wins that build momentum. Through people who stay long enough to see the change through.

When the faithful leave, the pastor loses his coalition. And the parish stays stuck.

The Gift of Generations

There's something else the bishop's advice trades away: multi-generational community.

When I sort myself into a parish of people who share my preferences - my age, my stage of life, my liturgical sensibilities - I gain comfort. But I lose something too.

I lose the 80-year-old who's been praying the rosary in that pew since before I was born. I lose the young mom who's figuring it out just like I once did. I lose the cradle Catholic who's never questioned anything and the convert who questions everything.

I lose the friction that forms me.

The parish isn't supposed to be a club of the like-minded. It's supposed to be a family - messy, intergenerational, sometimes frustrating. The people who annoy me might be exactly the people God is using to sand down my rough edges.

And the young people the bishop is worried about? Maybe what they need isn't just peers their own age. Maybe they also need to see a 75-year-old woman who still shows up every Sunday, still kneels for Communion, still believes after a lifetime of reasons not to. That witness isn't nothing.

Be Who You Are - And Stay

None of this means you should hide your convictions. If you believe in reverent liturgy, say so. If you think the music could be better, offer to help. If you long for tradition, don't pretend otherwise.

The answer isn't to stay and be silent. It's to stay and be yourself. To advocate with love. To build relationships first and push for change second. To trust that faithfulness over time bears fruit - even if you don't live to see it.

Cologne Cathedral took 632 years to complete. The workers who laid stones in 1300 never saw the spires. But they kept laying stones.

The Honest Tension

I'll be honest: I don't have this fully resolved.

There are days when I think Bishop Mutsaerts is right - when the frustration is so thick that I wonder if I'm wasting my time, if my family would be better served elsewhere, if I'm being stubborn when I should be strategic.

And there are days when I feel called to stay with a clarity I can't explain. When I sense that this is exactly where God wants me - not despite the difficulty, but because of it.

I suspect the answer is different for different people. Some are called to plant new communities. Some are called to find the places already thriving. And some are called to stay in the hard soil and keep working.

But I don't think "just go somewhere else" is the universal answer. Not for everyone. Not for me.

The parish I've been given is still the parish I've been given.

And I'm still trying to bloom where I'm planted.

If this resonated with you, I'd be honored if you shared it with someone who might need to hear it.