Bishop Garcia, former bishop of Monterey, issued the letter to the Latin Mass community located at Sacred Heart Church in Hollister, CA, on 14 September (coincidently the anniversary of Summorum Pontificum going into effect) snuffing out their TLM and community four days before he was installed as the new bishop of Austin, Texas.
10 days later….
This same Bp. Garcia, now in Austin, TX, suppressed a TLM at Texas A&M which was scheduled to be celebrated by a visiting priest. The Chancellor forbade the priest to travel to College Station (which he can’t do). HERE
What the heck is this? The PRC?
Again, it’s not just about fear and hatred of the TLM. It’s about how they see the people who want the the TLM.
Loading ...
As someone who’s actively involved with campus ministry at Texas A&M, the biggest stab in the back is that our head priest was the one to report the TLM directly to the Diocese. We still don’t know why he did this. Please pray for the softening of his heart, and the hearts of all clergy who unjustly seek to suppress the Mass of our fathers.
But the Old Mass was prohibited by Saint (?) Paul VI. I wish the Church still made sense.
I’m one of the MC’s for what, previously, was the local occasional, off-Sunday TLM here in College Station. I also know the overall history of all this probably better than anyone since I’ve personally been involved in promoting traditional worship in College Station for 20 years (unlike the students who are only here for 4 years or so and then leave). I myself started a men’s schola with a dear friend here, and we have devoted countless hours of blood sweat and tears to getting to this point. I hope it is not all in vain. Most of us were waiting for Bishop Danny to be installed so we could approach him on this issue and get his blessing before we continued with TLMs. This is now a bigger mess than it needed to be. Some traditionalist students came in and decided to act on their own and bring in a priest from outside the diocese to have a semi-public TLM on campus without consulting the new bishop.
I don’t know what it means when Rorate Caeli says this TLM was “scheduled”, but that is nothing official at all. That may be why the pastor at St. Mary’s felt obligated to inform the diocese once he was made aware of the situation. I wouldn’t be critical of Fr. Will Straten. He is a faithful priest whom I’ve known for decades. He takes his vow of obedience to his bishop very seriously. He’s also a very humble guy. Give him some grace. This was not a decision he made lightly nor, I believe, with any malice.
As far as the Chancellor impeding the visiting priest: FrZ correctly points out Canon Law does not grant him jurisdictional authority to impede a priest from exercising his priestly ministry in the said diocese. That would have to come from our new bishop who was installed just before this notice was sent to the Victoria Diocesan Chancellor. I’m not sure why Bishop Danny didn’t act, but we sure as heck know he’s going to weigh in now, and with less sympathy for the work we’ve been doing locally for decades, thank you.
I do know firsthand that the Diocesan Administrator during the interregnum, Fr. James Misko, was in the middle of making arrangements to meet some of the requests from the Traditional Catholics in the area when Pope Leo named Bishop Danny as our new bishop. Those plans were then put on hold so as not to bind Bishop Danny before he assumed his seat. Fr. Misko was certainly trying to accommodate the small number of us who wanted the TLM here. I believe he acted as best he could given the difficult situation and limited resources of the Diocese. Fr. Misko is a very solid priest who, I hope, will becomes a bishop one day. He would be a good leader for the Church Militant.
I wish people had been patient and waited. Kwasniewski himself seemed to encourage cooperation with authorities while we wait for Pope Leo to act WRT TC. His Holiness has been seeing +Burke and +Sarah recently, so it sounds like he wants to dialogue and hear both sides of this issue. That’s very hopeful!
I hope he acts on TC so bishops have more clarity. Otherwise they will be forced to observe the letter of the law and not exploit loopholes and exceptions like they have been doing. TC, whatever you may think of it, binds Ordinaries. And these Ordinaries must answer to God for their filial obedience to the Pope. If we are to hope for a freeing up of the TLM, the law itself will need to be changed at the highest level. Otherwise people will just keep fighting. And many of us who are trying to follow Kwasniewski’s advice are now left empty-handed because some people who are visiting our town for 4 years to get their degree have possibly ruined all our diligent work.
I hope Bishop Danny reads this and realizes that many of us locals (priests included) were waiting in obedience to dialogue with him. These students are not part of our group. They do not respect the authority of the Church, they belittle the new Mass, and they have driven away tradition-minded Catholics on chat forums with their radical, aggressive views. They will leave after 4 years, and we locals will be left with this mess. We are not a part of that group, and we hope your Excellency, will consider us separately in your generosity. We will be obedient, regardless.
I’ll admit, although I go to mass with some members of the group I don’t interact with their chat, mainly due to what RichR mentioned with how toxic and radical some of the louder members can be. They’re young, zealous, and their upmost members tend towards very hardline “trad” viewpoints, as well as constantly bashing the Novus Ordo, people who attend it, and priests who offer it. It’s to a point that many members don’t do anything with the group at large because they get scared off by the radical ranting. That being said, the inviting of a priest from another diocese to offer a single Low Mass shouldn’t be seen as some grand act of disobedience, no matter how you swing it. Nothing was done which disrespects the authority of the bishop, nor that stifles the ministry of St Mary’s. The idea that we should walk on eggshells for years on end for the slightest chance of local access to the Mass of the Ages is absurd, and has produced hardly any results. Inviting a priest to town to offer a single mass shouldn’t invoke such a swift and nonsensical reaction from the diocese.
Either way, given Bishop Daniel Garcia’s final act as Ordinary of the Diocese of Monterey I’m assuming he’ll do the same for Austin whether or not it’s caused by a couple of loud young traditionalists at a single college campus. I sincerely doubt (and wholeheartedly hope) that the impulsive acts and words of a few zealous teenagers isn’t enough to garner a dramatic reaction.
I pray that he will wait for Pope Leo to weigh in on the issue before taking sweeping action as he did in Monterey, but I’m not getting my hopes up given that he’s repeating the same rhetoric Pope Francis (+) used to enforce TC, that being that the Mass of Paul VI is somehow the only expression of the Latin lex orandi, somehow ignoring the existence of the Ambrosian, Mozarabic, Carmelite, Premonstratensian, and Dominican rites which are all actively offered in the Latin Rite alongside the Novus Ordo, and considered valid expressions of our faith.
(On that note, by this logic not only would all priests offering these other Latin liturgical rites be somehow depriving the lay faithful or the Brothers in their monastic orders of the “true” lex orandi of the Church, but both Pope St JP II AND Pope Benedict XVI would both be guilty of allowing spiritual harm on a wide scale by liberalizing its use. It’s pure nonsense, and I pray that Bishop Garcia comes to see that.)
Given what RichR and FleurDeZ posted, Pope Francis had a valid point when he wrote that some TLM communities and the celebration of the preconciliar Mass “widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division” and that there is a “close connection between the choice of celebrations according to the liturgical books prior to Vatican Council II and the rejection of the Church and her institutions in the name of what is called the “true Church.””, eh?
RichR and FleurDeZ:
Thanks for clarifying further details. I do know Fr. Straten and he’s one of the good guys. It also sounds like the Mass in question was “outside of St. Mary’s Catholic Church ” and there’s been some jumping the gun so to speak in a few places. I do hope and pray that some dialogue happens here and elsewhere. Several bishops in Texas (well I think mine is staying put for a while but I am not Pope Leo XIV) are going to be eligible for retirement within the next five years.
St. Mary’s Catholic Church in College Station has a special place for myself. I returned to college full time in the early 1990s at Texas A&M. As a lukewarm Catholic who was considering other options (mostly evangelical) my reversion story began there. Students who attend St. Mary’s Catholic Church normally keep the faith. With how competitive it is now to get into college, I don’t think academically I would have been accepted to Texas A&M as a retread 20-something transfer student today. I sometimes think had I gone to another college I might have become non-denominational (although had I become Episcopalian or Methodist I think eventually I would have returned to the Catholic Church).
Sorry, Godfrey, it’s the suppression and anti-TLM bullying that “widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church.” The liberal establishment simply must accept the fact that no one can be bullied into loving the Novus Ordo. People like what they like. Depriving them of what they want in the name of unity does nothing but create hard feelings and animosity. This is analogous to 19th century American bishops who told Eastern rite Catholics that it was Tridentine Mass or nothing…. with many of those Eastern rite Catholics then defecting to Orthodoxy. Benedict XVI got it right. Allow for legitimate diversity, and 98% of this animosity goes away
As a pure outsider to the situation, two observations.
1.) Young people do not care a lick about the liturgy wars following Vatican II, especially traditionalists. Their world is a different paradigm, and they are operating much closer to the rules that liberals/heterodox operate by (just do the thing), but from the vantage point of tradition. Young US conservatives are the same way, which really rankles older conservatives who play by the rules of being the principled (and losing) political opposition. Young people have started playing their own game (as all young people do), and older generations should not and cannot force them to play the games of yesteryear (a practical application of Fr. Z’s “biological solution”).
2.) Francis “this is my ball, and I am taking it and going home” treated doctrine and liturgy (especially in TC) as if it were his plaything. TC really is an example of trying to make something true through force of law – clericalism in its finest form. It itself is the breeder of partisan spirit, not the reaction to it. JPII and BXVI spent their pontificates arguing that the NO and TLM were the same game. Those young TLM traditionalists who grew up under F absorbed his rhetoric of the NO and TLM being different games. His fault, not theirs.
As far as carping against the NO goes, I’ve traveled in liberal circles – they carp against the NO all the time as well. Everyone carps; nobody is not having a problem with sins of the tongue. Nobody thinks that the NO is the greatest thing ever — it is either seen as the imperfect stepping stone, or an imperfection that needs to be turned away from.