Youth, and the Attraction to Tradition

CORAL GABLES | Joshua Hernandez is a former Protestant who credits the traditional Latin Mass for his conversion to Catholicism.

Raised to be anti-Catholic, Hernandez began to look for a Christian denomination with historical relevance and formal liturgical practice. Though he thought Catholicism seemed too ritualistic, his first stop in his search for a church was attending a Mass to “get it out of the way.”

“It all clicked,” he said, when he saw the Latin Mass “in all its glory.”

Now he is a regular attendee at the Extraordinary Form Latin Mass celebrated each Sunday at 9 a.m. at Sts. Francis and Clare Mission in Edgewater.

Likewise, his girlfriend, Vida Tavakoli, knew she had found her home in the Catholic Church when she first attended Latin Mass in England.

Formerly an atheist, her aversion toward religion changed at the end of her college career, when she became a Protestant. During her post-collegiate travels she became resolute in converting to Catholicism after attending a Missa Cantata, or sung Mass, in the parish of her favorite author, J.R.R. Tolkien, a devout Catholic who penned the “Lord of the Rings” series.

Paulina Pecic, a student at the University of Miami who attends St. Augustine parish in Coral Gables, recently attended her first Latin Mass while visiting Ave Maria University on Florida’s southwest coast.

“It was beautiful,” she said, hoping for another “chance to embrace the extra beauty that the chanting might offer.”

Pecic said she appreciated the “reverential aspect that can sometimes be watered down, or, in a worst-case scenario, completely disregarded by the congregation during the Ordinary Form.”

“I especially enjoyed Communion (at traditional Latin Mass), where instead of going up to the priest, the priest comes to you at the kneeler,” she said. “It was a visible reminder for me that receiving Christ in the Eucharist is a gift given out of love and not a right to claim for granted.”