When Tradition Inspires Fiction

The Traditional Latin Mass is considered by many as the synthesis and pinnacle of civilization, having inspired artists of all kinds over the centuries. Its current revival is expected to benefit the wider culture again—starting with fiction writing, as illustrated by three recent novels. 

That novelists from different continents should feel inspired to describe the same phenomenon, albeit from various angles, confirms the vitality and relevance of their shared topic of interest. Three lady novelists—one from Spain, one from America, and one from England—have published novels about the trend identified as the Traditional (Latin Mass) revival. Surprisingly, none of their three novels overtly deals with the traditional liturgy, theology, or philosophy. Such omissions may be a blessing in disguise, allowing their plots to unfold with more literary genuineness than if using fiction as a thin veil for doctrinal affirmations.

Perhaps more convincingly, therefore, the three stories entail, but don’t insist upon, traditional Latin church communities. What takes place in the sanctuary, the reasons for the traditional Latin worship, the crises in Church and society caused by the eclipse of liturgical reverence and doctrinal clarity, all such considerations are woven into the narratives as material taken for granted rather than domineering the plot. Let us take a look at each novel.

A Spanish journalist with a law degree, Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera published her breakthrough novel The Awakening of Miss Prim in 2013 (Booket Editions). The heroine is Prudencia Prim, an academic young woman applying for a position as a librarian in a family home set in an idyllic French village. Through her interactions with the children of the house and their father and grandmother, as well as with the villagers, Miss Prim journeys from her rather secularist and feminist assumptions to a surprising admission of the value and truth offered through principles and behaviors which she used to decry as oppressive or delusory.

Her perception changes slowly, without fanfare, nor with a sense of defeat. Rather, she comes to admit that religious faith, if its object is true, offers a decisive criterion for selecting a spouse, as well as the surest basis for neighbourly life in a rural community and also, ultimately, for one’s spiritual awakening. The tone is light and even humorous—but not at the expense of the heroine, a likeable figure victim of her secular upbringing. The novel gently suggests, rather than hammers, the solution or remedy. Without disclosing too much, we can say that Prudencia’s conversation with a traditional Benedictine monk, short as it is, acts as a catalyst that will confirm the intuitions nurtured in her soul through the friendship of the entire village community. Translated into various languages, The Awakening of Miss Prim has met with unexpected success.

Elizabeth Altham is a retired teacher in America. Her novel Death Comes to Wyandotte (published in 2025 by Os Justi Press) depicts the transition, within a crumbling American Midwest parish, toward a thriving Traditional Latin Mass community. A significant feature is the absence of complacency evinced by the Traditional group. Indeed, the change is initiated by the diocesan bishop himself in response to a request for the Traditional Latin Mass by a local association of lay people.

However, the prelate does not grant their wish out of the goodness of this heart. With rather unfatherly irony, he allocates to them the most modern church building he can think of, literally a spaceship made of concrete, devoid of any orientation or sacred features. Thankfully, he also appoints Fathers Hopkins and Houghton, two likeable priests from among his own diocesan clergy (even though his motive is only to rid himself of conservative clerics). Their fraternal life and cheerful efforts to revive Catholic life against gloom and doom provide the main thread in the narrative. They receive grassroots support, suggesting that interest—and, later, love—for the traditional ways are shared by the population far beyond the initial committee that petitioned the bishop.

Such is perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of the story, since it gently debunks the myth that Traditional Latin Mass-goers are a different species from mainstream Catholics. The “flying saucer” shape of the church allocated by the bishop subliminally betrays his assumption that “trads” come from elsewhere than “Planet Church” and with questionable motivations—that is, as invaders, not as brethren. Far from such antagonism, Altham’s novel can be seen as a blueprint for the revival of dying church communities, benefitting locals and inspiring many more across that diocese and further afield.

Bernice Zieba lives with her husband and children within a Traditional Latin Mass community in England. She published, in 2026, The Spire (Jan Webmedia). Its main protagonist is Alice, a young Englishwoman living in 2075 in Preston, Lancashire. Zieba’s depiction of our country in half a century, when digital technology is ubiquitously applied by the woke State to control every move and thought of the population, is painfully credible. Scheduled for demolition, a church with a very tall spire becomes the gate through which Alice travels back to the 19th century and then as far back as penal times under Protestant persecution.

Along her rabbit hole, modern Alice falls into no wonderland, but she discovers periods in history when faith, and Catholicism in particular, were worth standing up for and even dying for. In The Spire, the heroine embodies modern young generations in our secular Western world. They are unchurched, lack basic knowledge of history, and, consequently, assume that religion and family are long shaken-off shackles from a bygone era. But human nature in them cannot be eradicated as long as they breathe, nor the craving for God and His created reflections as truth, beauty, and bounty.

Thus, Alice warms to a fellow time traveller, Fr. O’Brien, first encountered as the zealous pastor of the 19th-century parish church and then as a heroic recusant priest under Tudor persecution. Mrs. Zieba’s attention to detail shows in her carefully researched depictions of the slums and cotton mills in Preston during the Industrial Revolution, with moving Dickensian hues. Why may mature readers, not only teenagers, enjoy reading The Spire? Because its juxtaposing of three epochs feels neither artificial nor childish but aims at showing that our era, the 2020s, is blessed with small, budding Traditional Latin Mass communities which we should support and make widely known, thus helping curb secular oppression and investing in the lasting reconversion of England.

Readers may have come across more novels depicting the Traditional Latin Mass revival. These three are not presented here on the basis of their literary merit, even though their plots are well constructed, their style flows unobtrusively, and their characters are consistent. Indeed, professional literary critics may wish for more depth and complexity to these narratives. Enjoyable as they are, they may not pass the test of time as works of art—since very, very few novels do so in any generation. They matter still as a sample manifesting the impact of the traditional Latin revival upon the imagination of the wider population.

For decades we have heard a growing number of people dare call the crisis by its name. Admittedly, fiction has been used already to depict the liturgical and doctrinal crisis affecting the Church, such as in Fr. Bryan Houghton’s Mitre and Crook (1979), and in Stephen Oliver’s Smoke in the Sanctuary (2004, Epsilon Books). But those books focused on the struggle of bishops and priests trying to salvage the treasures of tradition as from within the clerical scope. Useful as such books are, and very much retaining their relevance to our day, they did not give pride of place to the ordeal of the foot soldiers, the people still in the pews or already lapsed.

The Awakening of Miss Prim, Death Comes to Wyandotte, and The Spire focus on the perception of the Church crisis by the laity as an existential want. The voice of the flock speaks higher here—at times confused, desperate, then resolute and grateful. The malaise felt by communities deprived of the traditional founts of liturgical and doctrinal sustenance and their attempts to seek, retrieve, and secure pearls of great price is worth depicting. The fact that three novelists—all of them laywomen, from various parts of the world—have been inspired to do so confirms the growing engagement of our generation in restoring the Roman traditions of the Church as a living treasure feeding the imagination of all so as to enlighten minds and warm up hearts with divine charity.