Most American Catholics, it seems, don’t.

According to CNS:

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. Catholics surveyed said they have no opinion on the increased availability of the Tridentine Mass since Pope Benedict XVI made it easier for parishes to offer the traditional liturgy two years ago.

Overall, 63 percent of Catholics held a neutral opinion about the availability of the Tridentine Mass, according to findings released Aug. 24 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a research center based at Georgetown University in Washington.

“Such a large segment of the Catholic population has no experience of this; they tend to have no opinion,” said Mark Gray, a research associate at the center. For “even some people who attended this Mass as children, the interest has faded a bit,” he added. “It’s not negative. They just have no opinion.”

Of the survey’s 1,007 Catholic respondents, those who favor having the traditional Mass offered more widely outnumbered those who oppose the increased availability of the Tridentine rite by more than a 2-1 ratio, or 25 percent to 12 percent.

UPDATE: This report has more details:

Catholics born between 1943 and 1961 indicated the greatest support for the traditional liturgy at 32 percent. Only 13 percent of that age group opposed the rite. Thirty percent of Catholics born before 1943 supported the Tridentine Mass while 24 percent opposed it.

Younger generations — those born between 1961 and 1981, who came of age after the Second Vatican Council, and those born since 1982, who are considered the millennial generation — had the lowest level of support for the Tridentine Mass being made more widely available, at 21 percent and 16 percent, respectively.

Support for the Tridentine Mass was highest among people holding a graduate degree (43 percent) and those who were political independents (37 percent). Republicans (27 percent) and those who leaned Republican (33 percent) were more likely to support the old rite than Democrats (27 percent) and those who leaned Democrat (10 percent).

Women also favored the increased availability of the Tridentine Mass more than men did: 28 percent to 23 percent.

The survey found that nearly three in 10 Catholics — 29 percent — who do not oppose bringing back the Tridentine Mass would attend such a liturgy if it was available at convenient times and locations. CARA said the number represents about 11 percent of all U.S. Catholics, or about 5.7 million individuals.

Meantime, this story says the Vatican is down-playing some proposed changes to the mass that were evidently presented to the Pope earlier this year:

“At the moment, there are no institutional proposals for a modification of the liturgical books currently in use,” the spokesman, Father Ciro Benedettini, said Aug. 24.

He was responding to a report that a document with proposed liturgical modifications, including a curb on the practice of receiving Communion in the hand, had been sent to the pope last April by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.

The article, published by the newspaper Il Giornale, said the document was a first concrete step toward the “reform of the reform” in liturgy planned by Pope Benedict. It said the congregation proposed to promote a greater sense of the sacred in liturgy, recover the use of the Latin language in celebrations, and reformulate introductive parts of the Roman Missal to end abuses and experimentation.

The article said the worship congregation had voted on and approved the recommendations almost unanimously during its plenary session last March.

Vatican sources told Catholic News Service that the worship congregation did not, in fact, suggest a program of liturgical change, but simply forwarded to the pope some considerations from its discussions focusing on eucharistic adoration, the theme of the plenary session.

Some individual members may have added opinions on other liturgical issues, but they in no way constituted formal proposals, one source said.

The article in Il Giornale said one idea being studied by the worship congregation was a return to celebrating Mass with the priest facing the same direction as the people, known as “ad orientem.”

The Vatican sources told CNS that this issue, however, was not discussed by the congregation at its plenary.

The debate over Communion in the hand drew attention in 2008, when Sri Lankan Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, then secretary of the Vatican’s worship congregation, said he thought it was time for the Catholic Church to reconsider the current policy.

There’s more at the NCR link — along with some eyebrow-raising reader comments.