It seems appropriate to start this week’s roundup with a topic roiling the Catholic world: the aggressive regime of petty micromanagement that has turned the diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, into a warzone and made it the focus of worldwide attention.
Where I live we temporarily had a TLM low mass once a month and then nearly every week until one of the celebrants (a retired bishop) died causing the others ( four in all) to have to pick up work the Bishop had been doing. At the first Mass a man and his wife showed up. He was a retired math professor at my university. He told me that he grew up in Oklahoma where his parish priest was a former Lutheran pastor who converted and entered a a Catholic seminary. When the NO was imposed, this priest said no way was he going to celebrate the new Mass. The reason was what he had been taught in seminary.
Exactly. I think the difference between the heroic generation of the 1970s - the priests who never gave up the TLM for the NO - and the sometimes weaker traditional priests of today is that the latter did not have that wrap-around experience of preconciliar catechesis, seminary, theology, and liturgy, so it's harder for them to see the shocking rupture and perceive that it cannot be from God.
You can dress up the NO with smells, bells, and lace but it’s not very different from putting a wedding gown on a gorilla; it’s still ugly. (No offense meant to gorillas.)
I grew up with the Novus Ordo Mass in the Diocese of Little Rock. There wasn't even a bishop in the area then until I was a teenager (a Monsignor ran things with supervision from the Archdiocese of St. Louis).
I had no idea Latin was still a thing in the Catholic Church until I looked online and sought out a Fraternity of St. Peter community in the area. It's a different enough rite to give me appreciation for what I'm already familiar with.
Parts of the Novus Ordo Mass are said in Latin at the Cathedral where I live currently. I hope more congregations do that and more in the future--it's a simple thing that does a lot for me and other younger Catholics who want to share in the long legacy of the Roman Catholic Church without completely ceding our faith to Protestant tradition.
If you can charitably reply to this with your thoughts, I'd be eager to read them. Thanks, and have a blessed week!
It’s not about Latin. It’s not about liturgical trappings. It’s not about altar rails. Those are lies. The Novus Ordo Mass is valid. The Eucharist is confected. That’s the only good that can be said about it. It’s defective. It’s Protestant. It’s a complete break with the Tradition of the Church. Don’t take my word for it. There is copious evidence. But you have to do the work yourself. Research. Study. Pray.
And I would suggest that if you can’t take whatever response you get when you comment you shouldn’t comment. Your arrogance and overinflated ego are repugnant. Neither I nor anyone else answers to you.
Fr. Bailey, I don't think Eric was trying to be provocative. I think he wanted to know why it's not enough to add some Latin and chant in order to retain a connection with tradition.
My response is this: we don't get to pick and choose what we inherit from the ages of faith, but we should humbly and gratefully receive all of it, and be apprentices to it, rather than masters over it. The liturgical reformers exercised the latter attitude and thus brought untold woes upon the Church.
Eric, if you are living in St. Louis, I highly recommend going to the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales or the Oratory of SS. Gregory & Augustine for Mass. Both are wonderful communities and you will be immersing yourself in the very stream that all of those saints were formed by.
"the presence of traditional liturgies in a parochial setting leads to divisions within the Church" -- the authors say that this has not been their experience? Seems pretty mealy-mouthed. Traditional liturgies constitute division within the Church. Division is a fact. "I came not to bring peace, but the sword..." So fight, good men, like good soldiers of Christ. Don't euphemize the truth away.
I certainly want to have nothing to do with liberals, progressives, or modernists, and I am not in communion with perverts and heretics. To that extent, the lines are being drawn, and one will need to choose.
Respectfully, then draw the line and start your own church. Quit making threats. There are plenty of older style churches in every state that have been unloaded by dioceses because they can’t afford the repairs. I am with the Bishop of Charlotte.
I make no threats. If I had to attend the SSPX, I would gladly do so. Happily, I have access to the FSSP, and prior to that, I had access to the ICKSP. There's no doubt that union with the bishop is important. But he himself must govern prudently and respectfully, and I'm afraid +Martin has done no such thing. There's a reason all the clergy can't stand him.
Short of priests settling this moron and the laity stopping all donations, this will still be promulgated with Previst's approval. The public outcry is just a hurdle for these vile deviants
How can it be, that when I read 'A Time for Silence' I find more charity, reverence, and awe in a non-believing Patrick Leigh Fermor, than I do in these iconoclastic vandals who masquerade as Church leaders?
But Peter, what happens if a bishop removes the faculties of a priest for continuing to say the TLM?
At the very least, he will be removed as parish priest and any future Confessions or Marriages performed by him would be invalid even though his Masses would be still be valid but illicit. What does he do then?
1. There is no question that attendence at any valid Catholic rite (it doesn't even have to be licit, the new code of canon law expressly left that out) fulfills a Sunday or Holy Day obligation. So there is never an issue with the Mass.
2. If a layman does not have moral certainty that he can or should confess to a given priest, he may always go to another of whom he has no doubts. And while the new sacrament of penance is not as well formulated as the old one, both are very short and both are valid, so there is generally not the same level of anguish as occurs with the new Mass. It should be recalled here that the SSPX enjoys universal faculties for confession from Pope Francis, which have not been revoked.
3. Marriage is still more complex, as currently a priest must possess the permission to witness a marriage. Here it seems most prudent to search high and low for a priest who will do the traditional marriage rite, but if that fails, seek out an SSPX priest who has asked for and received the recognition of the local bishop (which, as you know, Pope Francis said could and should be done, and many bishops have complied).
As for the other sacraments, if the Church is in a dire crisis that affects her very core, if (as Tychonius and Ratzinger admit) there is a bifurcation in the Church between the Body of Christ and the Body of the Devil, if we are seeing (as Fr Thomas Weinandy once put it) a schism within the Church between those who believe and those who do not, surely we can say we are in a state of emergency, a state in which sacraments may be given out of necessity to those who approach in good faith?
Again, let me reiterate that if priests in the 1970s had not been willing to continue their work in spite of excommunication, suspension, and other penalties -- here I have the SSPX above all in mind -- there would be no traditional Catholicism left today. Are we really prepared to say that Fr. Michael Pfleger in Chicago is "in communion with the Church" and "possesses faculties," while canceled priest Fr. Fiddleback is not and does not?
If ever there were a time for "ecclesia supplet," this is it.
This Bishop Martin seems incompetent. He should be able to make a better case for his preferences than he has. Anger and impatience are not good bedfellows for a wholesale repression of piety.
S.D. Wright had an interesting observation about all of this, namely that the good Franciscan Bishop Martin is being almost TOO cartoonish about this TLM thing. That this seems way over the top especially if it was Cardinal Prevost who picked him for this bishopric and he had just seen the same Prevost, now Leo XIV who was I remind you elected in an illicit conclave with 13 illegal electors, less than two months ago and was allegedly told to take it easy. So after the same guy who (allegedly) told you less than two months ago to take it easy gets elected pope you decide to put the pedal to the floor and go full speed ahead? Really? Call me a skeptic.
So what our new trad hero Leo XIV steps in and puts Bishop Martin to heel and gives the TLM faithful permission to do what they already been doing and have no need to ask either his or Bishop Martin's permission for, then what? We all fall at his feet? I guess we'll see.
I saw Wright's piece (and also Jackson's) but found them very unconvincing. I know a lot of people in the Charlotte diocese who say +Martin is dumb as a brick and ideological as a Stalinist, so there's no need to posit backroom handshakes.
And I don't know why you repeat this nonsese about an illicit conclave. Phillip Campbell has already shredded that here:
I do it because the law says there may be no more than 120 Cardinal electors in the Conclave. It also says that no Cardinal over 80 may vote. BUT IT ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE SAYS THAT EVERY CARDINAL UNDER 80 HAS THE RIGHT TO VOTE!!!!! Nowhere. Tell me where you see that. I don't care how Catholic commentators repeat it, it still isn't true.
For the hundredth time if anybody actually reads Universi Dominici Gregis there is no guaranteed right to vote if a Cardinal is under 80. Sorry it's just not there. It says no Cardinal 80 or over can vote in the conclave and it says that of those who remain there can be no more than 120 electors. But it nowhere gives every Cardinal under 80 the right to vote.
That article doesn't resolve the issue of the 133 Cardinals at all. This part is simply factually incorrect:
"The document limits the number of Cardinal electors to 120 while also stating that no Cardinal elector can be excluded from voting, even if there are more than 120. To harmonize these provisions, the Church interprets the 120 rule loosely in light of the prerogatives of the Cardinal electors. In other words, which is more important, that the Cardinal electors exercise their millennium-old right to choose the Roman pontiff, or that we adhere to the arbitrary number of 120 set by Paul VI?"
No. 36 of Universi Dominici gregis, which states that no elector can be excluded from voting, uses the phrase "in accordance with the norm of No. 33." In other words, No. 36 is DEPENDENT upon No. 33. And No. 33 clearly provides two conditions: that the Cardinal electors cannot be over 80 years old, and that there cannot be more than 120 electors. Further, No. 33 does not admit the possibility of over 120 electors in principle while excluding any excess ones in practice; it simply does not allow more than 120 electors, period.
What is more likely, that Pope Francis granted a dispensation or made an exception to the law (which in any case would have to be subject to strict interpretation, according to cc. 18, 92), or that he simply FOLLOWED the law that already existed and simply increased the number of non-voting members of the College?
As for that millennium-old right, that right in current law is clearly written in such a way that it exists in DEPENDENCE upon the provisions of No. 33, which clearly give two impediments to the right to vote: being above the age of 80 and having more than 120 electors. I agree the 120 number is arbitrary, but so is the age limit. And if we're really questioning whether it makes sense to have a non-voting Cardinal in the first place, that is a really good question to ask. Maybe a case could be made that the immemorial custom of giving all Cardinals the right to vote supersedes UDG 33, but that isn't the case the Campbell is making here. And why is the age limit sacrosanct while the 120 number is not?
You wonder if Bishop Martin is really Catholic. It’s so diabolical and anti-human.
That's right. I think he thinks he is, but objectively, he's not.
Could say the exact same about Leo. And Francis the False before him.
There's no wondering about it. Does the rot never cease to rear it's ugly head? And these are the 'shepherds of our souls?? Heaven help us.
My friend Fr. Steve Kalinowski was priested! He will be a great priest (by God’s grace, of course). So happy for him.
Where I live we temporarily had a TLM low mass once a month and then nearly every week until one of the celebrants (a retired bishop) died causing the others ( four in all) to have to pick up work the Bishop had been doing. At the first Mass a man and his wife showed up. He was a retired math professor at my university. He told me that he grew up in Oklahoma where his parish priest was a former Lutheran pastor who converted and entered a a Catholic seminary. When the NO was imposed, this priest said no way was he going to celebrate the new Mass. The reason was what he had been taught in seminary.
Exactly. I think the difference between the heroic generation of the 1970s - the priests who never gave up the TLM for the NO - and the sometimes weaker traditional priests of today is that the latter did not have that wrap-around experience of preconciliar catechesis, seminary, theology, and liturgy, so it's harder for them to see the shocking rupture and perceive that it cannot be from God.
You can dress up the NO with smells, bells, and lace but it’s not very different from putting a wedding gown on a gorilla; it’s still ugly. (No offense meant to gorillas.)
I grew up with the Novus Ordo Mass in the Diocese of Little Rock. There wasn't even a bishop in the area then until I was a teenager (a Monsignor ran things with supervision from the Archdiocese of St. Louis).
I had no idea Latin was still a thing in the Catholic Church until I looked online and sought out a Fraternity of St. Peter community in the area. It's a different enough rite to give me appreciation for what I'm already familiar with.
Parts of the Novus Ordo Mass are said in Latin at the Cathedral where I live currently. I hope more congregations do that and more in the future--it's a simple thing that does a lot for me and other younger Catholics who want to share in the long legacy of the Roman Catholic Church without completely ceding our faith to Protestant tradition.
If you can charitably reply to this with your thoughts, I'd be eager to read them. Thanks, and have a blessed week!
It’s not about Latin. It’s not about liturgical trappings. It’s not about altar rails. Those are lies. The Novus Ordo Mass is valid. The Eucharist is confected. That’s the only good that can be said about it. It’s defective. It’s Protestant. It’s a complete break with the Tradition of the Church. Don’t take my word for it. There is copious evidence. But you have to do the work yourself. Research. Study. Pray.
And I would suggest that if you can’t take whatever response you get when you comment you shouldn’t comment. Your arrogance and overinflated ego are repugnant. Neither I nor anyone else answers to you.
Fr. Bailey, I don't think Eric was trying to be provocative. I think he wanted to know why it's not enough to add some Latin and chant in order to retain a connection with tradition.
My response is this: we don't get to pick and choose what we inherit from the ages of faith, but we should humbly and gratefully receive all of it, and be apprentices to it, rather than masters over it. The liturgical reformers exercised the latter attitude and thus brought untold woes upon the Church.
Eric, if you are living in St. Louis, I highly recommend going to the Oratory of St. Francis de Sales or the Oratory of SS. Gregory & Augustine for Mass. Both are wonderful communities and you will be immersing yourself in the very stream that all of those saints were formed by.
"the presence of traditional liturgies in a parochial setting leads to divisions within the Church" -- the authors say that this has not been their experience? Seems pretty mealy-mouthed. Traditional liturgies constitute division within the Church. Division is a fact. "I came not to bring peace, but the sword..." So fight, good men, like good soldiers of Christ. Don't euphemize the truth away.
I certainly want to have nothing to do with liberals, progressives, or modernists, and I am not in communion with perverts and heretics. To that extent, the lines are being drawn, and one will need to choose.
Respectfully, then draw the line and start your own church. Quit making threats. There are plenty of older style churches in every state that have been unloaded by dioceses because they can’t afford the repairs. I am with the Bishop of Charlotte.
I make no threats. If I had to attend the SSPX, I would gladly do so. Happily, I have access to the FSSP, and prior to that, I had access to the ICKSP. There's no doubt that union with the bishop is important. But he himself must govern prudently and respectfully, and I'm afraid +Martin has done no such thing. There's a reason all the clergy can't stand him.
Short of priests settling this moron and the laity stopping all donations, this will still be promulgated with Previst's approval. The public outcry is just a hurdle for these vile deviants
I agree that we need clergy to step up to the challenge and start providing "off the reservation."
Question being do they have the 'chops' to do so and how many of them are there? It appears so many are of the left bend mindset.
How can it be, that when I read 'A Time for Silence' I find more charity, reverence, and awe in a non-believing Patrick Leigh Fermor, than I do in these iconoclastic vandals who masquerade as Church leaders?
But Peter, what happens if a bishop removes the faculties of a priest for continuing to say the TLM?
At the very least, he will be removed as parish priest and any future Confessions or Marriages performed by him would be invalid even though his Masses would be still be valid but illicit. What does he do then?
I will add as a postscript the following:
1. There is no question that attendence at any valid Catholic rite (it doesn't even have to be licit, the new code of canon law expressly left that out) fulfills a Sunday or Holy Day obligation. So there is never an issue with the Mass.
2. If a layman does not have moral certainty that he can or should confess to a given priest, he may always go to another of whom he has no doubts. And while the new sacrament of penance is not as well formulated as the old one, both are very short and both are valid, so there is generally not the same level of anguish as occurs with the new Mass. It should be recalled here that the SSPX enjoys universal faculties for confession from Pope Francis, which have not been revoked.
3. Marriage is still more complex, as currently a priest must possess the permission to witness a marriage. Here it seems most prudent to search high and low for a priest who will do the traditional marriage rite, but if that fails, seek out an SSPX priest who has asked for and received the recognition of the local bishop (which, as you know, Pope Francis said could and should be done, and many bishops have complied).
If you've been following the posts here, you'll know that a priest needs no "faculties" to offer the TLM. See especially the end of this post:
https://www.traditionsanity.com/p/does-a-priest-need-permission-to
As for the other sacraments, if the Church is in a dire crisis that affects her very core, if (as Tychonius and Ratzinger admit) there is a bifurcation in the Church between the Body of Christ and the Body of the Devil, if we are seeing (as Fr Thomas Weinandy once put it) a schism within the Church between those who believe and those who do not, surely we can say we are in a state of emergency, a state in which sacraments may be given out of necessity to those who approach in good faith?
Again, let me reiterate that if priests in the 1970s had not been willing to continue their work in spite of excommunication, suspension, and other penalties -- here I have the SSPX above all in mind -- there would be no traditional Catholicism left today. Are we really prepared to say that Fr. Michael Pfleger in Chicago is "in communion with the Church" and "possesses faculties," while canceled priest Fr. Fiddleback is not and does not?
If ever there were a time for "ecclesia supplet," this is it.
This Bishop Martin seems incompetent. He should be able to make a better case for his preferences than he has. Anger and impatience are not good bedfellows for a wholesale repression of piety.
He jumped the shark.
S.D. Wright had an interesting observation about all of this, namely that the good Franciscan Bishop Martin is being almost TOO cartoonish about this TLM thing. That this seems way over the top especially if it was Cardinal Prevost who picked him for this bishopric and he had just seen the same Prevost, now Leo XIV who was I remind you elected in an illicit conclave with 13 illegal electors, less than two months ago and was allegedly told to take it easy. So after the same guy who (allegedly) told you less than two months ago to take it easy gets elected pope you decide to put the pedal to the floor and go full speed ahead? Really? Call me a skeptic.
So what our new trad hero Leo XIV steps in and puts Bishop Martin to heel and gives the TLM faithful permission to do what they already been doing and have no need to ask either his or Bishop Martin's permission for, then what? We all fall at his feet? I guess we'll see.
I saw Wright's piece (and also Jackson's) but found them very unconvincing. I know a lot of people in the Charlotte diocese who say +Martin is dumb as a brick and ideological as a Stalinist, so there's no need to posit backroom handshakes.
And I don't know why you repeat this nonsese about an illicit conclave. Phillip Campbell has already shredded that here:
https://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2025/05/what-universi-dominici-gregis-doesand.html
I do it because the law says there may be no more than 120 Cardinal electors in the Conclave. It also says that no Cardinal over 80 may vote. BUT IT ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE SAYS THAT EVERY CARDINAL UNDER 80 HAS THE RIGHT TO VOTE!!!!! Nowhere. Tell me where you see that. I don't care how Catholic commentators repeat it, it still isn't true.
For the hundredth time if anybody actually reads Universi Dominici Gregis there is no guaranteed right to vote if a Cardinal is under 80. Sorry it's just not there. It says no Cardinal 80 or over can vote in the conclave and it says that of those who remain there can be no more than 120 electors. But it nowhere gives every Cardinal under 80 the right to vote.
That article doesn't resolve the issue of the 133 Cardinals at all. This part is simply factually incorrect:
"The document limits the number of Cardinal electors to 120 while also stating that no Cardinal elector can be excluded from voting, even if there are more than 120. To harmonize these provisions, the Church interprets the 120 rule loosely in light of the prerogatives of the Cardinal electors. In other words, which is more important, that the Cardinal electors exercise their millennium-old right to choose the Roman pontiff, or that we adhere to the arbitrary number of 120 set by Paul VI?"
No. 36 of Universi Dominici gregis, which states that no elector can be excluded from voting, uses the phrase "in accordance with the norm of No. 33." In other words, No. 36 is DEPENDENT upon No. 33. And No. 33 clearly provides two conditions: that the Cardinal electors cannot be over 80 years old, and that there cannot be more than 120 electors. Further, No. 33 does not admit the possibility of over 120 electors in principle while excluding any excess ones in practice; it simply does not allow more than 120 electors, period.
What is more likely, that Pope Francis granted a dispensation or made an exception to the law (which in any case would have to be subject to strict interpretation, according to cc. 18, 92), or that he simply FOLLOWED the law that already existed and simply increased the number of non-voting members of the College?
As for that millennium-old right, that right in current law is clearly written in such a way that it exists in DEPENDENCE upon the provisions of No. 33, which clearly give two impediments to the right to vote: being above the age of 80 and having more than 120 electors. I agree the 120 number is arbitrary, but so is the age limit. And if we're really questioning whether it makes sense to have a non-voting Cardinal in the first place, that is a really good question to ask. Maybe a case could be made that the immemorial custom of giving all Cardinals the right to vote supersedes UDG 33, but that isn't the case the Campbell is making here. And why is the age limit sacrosanct while the 120 number is not?
I don't have an ironclad argument that the election was invalid, but it certainly was illicit: https://dorothealudwigwang.substack.com/p/no-133-cardinals-cannot-participate. And I have yet to see anyone actually tackle the original arguments in that article.
Bp Martin has gone off the deep end. It’ll be interesting to see if Pope Leo intervenes. It will also be telling if he doesn’t.
And if he doesn't a case of 'meet the new boos; same as the old boss"
That ship has sailed.