BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Rev. Jerome Fasano, center, begins a traditional Latin Mass at St.Andrew the Apostle Church in Clifton, VA.

MERCHANTVILLE, N.J. — Kelly Rein, 16, used to spend most Thursday nights doing homework. These days, Kelly wears a lace mantilla over her striped T-shirt and stovepipe jeans and attends a class on the traditional Latin Mass.

“I always attended the English Mass, but I never really paid much attention,” said Kelly, who took her parents and sisters to St. Peter Roman Catholic Church in this suburban Philadelphia town, where the first traditional Latin rite is scheduled for December.

At a Catholic summer camp, Kelly was struck by the reverence of the Latin Mass.

“It’s quiet,” she said. “People are paying attention. In the English Mass, it’s noisy. There are babies crying. But here people are completely focused on God.”

More than 40 years ago , the groundbreaking Second Vatican Council introduced Mass in the vernacular, sending the Latin Mass into disuse and alienating some Catholics.

But last summer, Pope Benedict XVI eased restrictions on the rite, and new celebrations of the Latin Mass are flowering. To the surprise of many, the rite has attracted priests and parishioners too young to have experienced the Latin Mass when it was the norm.

For adherents of the traditional Latin Mass, the interest of young people is proof of its enduring resonance and offers hope that it may revitalize an American church struggling to hold on to the young.

But the groundswell that many backers had predicted has not surfaced and seems unlikely, Catholic liturgists and church officials say. The traditional Latin, or Tridentine, Mass has emerged in just one or two parishes in most of the 25 largest dioceses in the country, according to a phone survey of the dioceses.

In some dioceses, there is so far almost no interest, diocesan officials said.

“Those that turn to it are looking for a sense of mystery, a sense of the sacred they find is missing otherwise,” said the Rev. Jerome Fasano, pastor of St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church in Clifton, Va., which began celebrating the Tridentine Mass in mid-September. “The more people are exposed to it, the more they are drawn to it.

“But it won’t be multitudes. I don’t think the traditional Latin Mass will be normative by any means.”

The Tridentine Mass was codified at the Council of Trent in 1570, after which it is named. In it, the priest faces the altar, not the congregation. He prays in Latin, much of it in a whisper, although readings from Scripture and the sermon are in the vernacular. A missal in Latin and English allows parishioners to follow along.

After the switch to the vernacular, Pope John Paul II allowed the Tridentine Mass to be celebrated, but only with the permission of local diocesan bishops.

In July, however, Pope Benedict issued a letter giving parishes the authority to celebrate the Mass without obtaining bishops’ permissions.

“What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us, too,” Pope Benedict wrote.

Where the Tridentine Mass is now being revived, the response has been encouraging, advocates said. In Clifton, 200 people show up for the Wednesday evening Mass at St. Andrew’s. Another is held on Saturday mornings.

At the first Tridentine Mass at St. Leo the Great Church in Pawtucket, R.I., on Oct. 21, about 180 people attended the sunset service, filling nearly all the pews.

A sense of the holy and the mysterious pulls across generations, drawing in children and their parents, who themselves are often too young to recall the Tridentine Mass.

“I have no memory of the Latin Mass from my childhood,” Anne McLaughlin said at St. Leo’s. “But for me it’s so refreshing to see him facing the east, the Tabernacle, focusing on Christ.”

Her daughter Aine, 15, agreed and said, “It’s so much prettier.”

Experts on the church say they have been surprised that young people have shown such interest.

“There’s a curiosity, and it is consistent with people looking for the transcendent and holy, which they maybe didn’t see in the Mass they attended growing up,” said the Rev. Keith F. Pecklers, professor of liturgy at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Still, those who study Catholic youth say that fewer than one in five attend Mass weekly and that the Tridentine Mass will not draw them in greater numbers. Instead, they are seeking a greater focus on social justice and sexual equality, said Vincent Bulduc, professor of sociology at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vt., who conducted a study of Catholic college students in 2004.

The way Catholics came to worship after the Vatican II council has been a source of passionate conflict for some. A tiny but vocal minority was outraged by what they considered abrupt and misguided changes of the council, and Pope Benedict’s letter was meant to heal that rift.

“One priest said on a blog that now we can’t be considered the nutty aunt in the attic,” said Jason King of Seattle, a board member of Una Voce America, a group that promotes the Tridentine Mass. “The pope’s letter legitimized our aspirations.”

Yet many Catholics, including priests and parishioners who grew up with the Tridentine Mass, recall services that were hasty and with little scriptural content.

“Most Catholics all over the world who have experienced the liturgy of Vatican II would say it’s not perfect, but most Catholics would admit that they are in a better place than 45 years ago,” Father Pecklers said. “They can understand the liturgy. Men and women are invited into celebration. There’s greater diversity and a greater sense of ownership of the parish by the laity.”

On a recent Wednesday evening at St. Andrew’s, young families and the elderly, children in school uniforms and craggy men, along with many women in mantillas, gathered in a hush as Father Fasano celebrated the Tridentine Mass. He leaned over the altar and prayed in a soft rumble of Latin.

Parishioners seemed confused at times about when to sit or stand. Yet no one seemed to be straining to hear the priest. They looked instead to their missals or prayed on their own. Some parishioners at St. Andrew’s spoke about how abandoning the Tridentine Mass weakened American Catholicism.

“The Mass was like this for 1,500 years, and it was changed by committee in the 1960s,” Joseph Dagostino, 35, said after a Wednesday night service at St. Andrew’s. Joseph Strada, 62, said, “When you can change the liturgy, you can change anything.” Mr. Dagostino interjected, “Like the church’s teachings on abortion or the sanctity of life.”

But those hoping that the Tridentine Mass will restore the Catholic Church of 50 years ago are likely to be disappointed, said the Rev. John F. Baldovin, professor of historical and liturgical theology at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass., and a critic of the old Mass.

“A lot of them think this is the way to go, back to the future, because it is really going to revive Catholicism,” Father Baldovin said. “You can produce a Tridentine Mass, but can’t reproduce the world it came from.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, National Report, of Saturday, November 10, 2007.