"Fourteen-year-old Sofia Martinez knelt eight months pregnant in the confession booth at St. Anthony's Church in Chicago on May 20, 1922, and instead of confessing sins, she'd begged seventy-two-year-old Father Michael O'Brien ""Father, I need help but I'm afraid to tell anyone but you in confession where it's secret""—and Father Michael had said gently ""Child, if you're in danger, I must help you. Tell me everything""—and Sofia had confessed not sins but crimes committed against her: ""I was sold at twelve to Miguel Martinez who is thirty-nine. My parents took $800. For two years he's kept me locked in a house. I'm eight months pregnant. Yesterday I heard him tell his brother that after the baby is born, he's taking the baby to sell to people in New York for $4,000, and he's putting me in an asylum so I can't report him. Father, is there any way you can help without breaking confession secret?""—and Father Michael, trained in canon law, had known that confession seal didn't apply to plans to harm others in the future, and he'd said ""Sofia, what he plans to do—sell your baby, imprison you—these are future crimes, not past sins. I can act on this. Will you let me write down what you've told me as a formal statement, not a confession?""—and Sofia had agreed, and Father Michael had written a detailed statement of everything Sofia had told him, she'd signed it, and he'd taken it directly to police with Sofia—and Miguel Martinez was arrested that evening before he could execute his plan, and the detailed statement from the confession booth—technically not a confession but a plea for help—was used as evidence, and Miguel was convicted of child trafficking, kidnapping, and conspiracy to sell a child—and Father Michael's careful documentation of Sofia's ""confession"" that wasn't a confession became a model for other clergy learning to distinguish between confidential sins and reportable crimes.
Sofia lived until 2005, dying at age ninety-seven. Before her death, she reflected: ""I was fourteen and eight months pregnant when I went to confession and told the priest not my sins but the crimes committed against me. I begged for help. Father Michael said future plans to harm are not protected confession secrets. He wrote down everything I told him—not as confession but as a legal statement. That document from a confession booth saved me and my baby. The priest understood the difference between sacred confidentiality and criminal conspiracy. My confession booth became a witness stand. My plea for help became legal evidence."""
To clarify: I’m not saying Japanese Catholics would leave the Church. I’m saying a Latin-only Mass would make Catholicism even harder for Japanese people to approach in the first place. In Japan, Christianity is already seen as foreign. Making the Mass less intelligible would not help evangelization.
What would really reduce the number of Catholics in Japan?
Not persecution.
Not secularism.
Not Buddhism.
Not Shinto.
Require every Mass to be in Latin.