Latin Mass Sunday, fish Friday, lots of incense and no altar girls -- Catholic traditionalists love the way their Church used to be.
Consigned to a shadow existence in today's Church, these anti-modernists have found an unlikely standard-bearer in actor Mel Gibson, whose film "The Passion of the Christ" opened amid controversy in the United States Wednesday.
Brutal scourging and crucifixion scenes recall medieval art depicting the Passion. Dialogue in ancient languages including Latin resurrect the language the Church used for mass for more than 1,500 years until local tongues replaced it in the 1960s.
It is all a far cry from some of Gibson's earlier blockbusters -- romantic comedies or action-packed thrillers spiced with a generous dose of sex.
Despite all the attention "The Passion" has brought them, the traditionalists remain a tiny minority unlikely to take on a bigger role in the Roman Catholic Church.
"The number of traditionalists in the U.S. is minuscule relative to America's more than 68 million Catholics," said William Dinges, a professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington. He said there were about 320 traditionalist houses of worship in the United States.
The largest traditionalist movement, the Swiss-based Society of Saint Pius X, may have a few hundred thousand followers globally, a drop in the ocean compared to the 1 billion total membership of the world's largest church.
Pope John Paul II, whose traditional teaching and modern communications appeal far more to conservative Catholics, has tried in vain to bring rebels back into the Vatican's fold.
But assessing John Paul's 25-year papacy, Pius X head Bishop Bernard Fellay said in Rome this month that talks with the Vatican were stalled and the pope's openness toward other religions had "overturned the order desired by God."
FERVOR BEATS NUMBERS
What the traditionalists lack in numbers, they make up for in fervor. All are passionately opposed to the reforms the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) drew up to bring the heavily traditional Church into the modern era.
They insist on the Tridentine Mass, the old liturgy with Latin prayers and fine embroidered vestments, and denounce the post-Council dialogue with other religions as a denial of the Church's traditional self-image as the only path to salvation.
Several have started their own churches -- Pius X has 454 priests and four bishops who have been excommunicated by the Vatican. But there is no central organization and they disagree on details.
"There are gradations of involvement in the movement," Dinges, an expert on Catholic traditionalism, told Reuters.
At one extreme, Sedevacantists, from the Latin for "empty seat," "represent the most radicalized traditionalist elements," Dinges said. They believe all popes since John XXIII (1958-1962) are usurpers because their reforms violated Church laws.
Hutton Gibson, the actor's father, has attracted critical coverage for propounding this view along with remarks about the Holocaust that Jewish critics brand as anti-Semitic.
Mel Gibson has been less clear about his beliefs in public but is not as radical as his father, and has vehemently denied the film is anti-Semitic, calling anti-Semitism a sin.
"I'm just Roman Catholic, the way they were up until the mid-'60s," he said last week.
Not all who attend a Latin mass are rebels. As part of his drive to woo traditionalists, Pope John Paul II has allowed parishes to offer occasional Tridentine services. In addition to traditionalist churches, Dinges said, 200 mainstream U.S. churches offer the Vatican-approved Latin mass.
For some Catholics over the age of 50, moreover, attending a Latin mass can be a nostalgic trip down memory lane to a time when their churches exuded the majesty of a centuries-old tradition and the mystery of the undoubting faith behind it.
According to sociologist Father Andrew Greely, more than a quarter of U.S. Catholics say they are traditional but few rebel against the modern Church. "The devoutly traditional and the traditionally devout are in open if relaxed dissent," he wrote.