As the Archdiocese of Washington pushes TLM to the margins, local fans of the form are making the best of the situation.
As the Archdiocese of Washington pushes TLM to the margins, local fans of the form are making the best of the situation.
T he wooden pews at Saint Mary Mother of God — an inconspicuous Catholic church in the Chinatown area of Washington, D.C., that recently celebrated its 175th anniversary — are old, creaky, and hard. But this past Sunday, September 18, they were also full, as families from all around the Archdiocese of Washington (ADW) and beyond flocked to “Old Saint Mary’s” to celebrate mass in the extraordinary form for one last time. As the choir began to chant, Patrick Lally, who has been attending St. Mary’s since 1989 and helps during Mass as a master of ceremonies, could not describe the occasion as anything but “desolate.”
That’s because today, on the feast of Saint Matthew, Cardinal Wilton Gregory’s instructions for interpreting Pope Francis’s apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes take effect. These rules officially relegate the traditional Latin mass (TLM) — which has nourished Catholics since the fourth century — to “non-parochial churches distributed geographically throughout the Archdiocese.” To an outsider, such changes may seem trivial. But they’re a serious matter for the more than 1,200 Catholics who attend TLM weekly in the ADW (which encompasses D.C. and several Maryland counties). The cardinal’s order uproots their spiritual lives, alienates them from their home parishes, and leaves them as spiritual “refugees” in the words of Monsignor Charles Pope, whom Gregory named as his delegate for the pastoral care of TLM communities.
Setting aside opinions about the liturgy, about which faithful Catholics can and do have profound disagreements, it is difficult to disagree with Monsignor Pope’s characterization. TLM devotees throughout the archdiocese — many of whom are young parents with small children — are effectively being pushed out of parishes that they helped to build.
Saint Francis de Sales (SFDS) in Benedict, Md., provides a poignant example of the painful situation in which many TLM devotees find themselves today. After the church completed a $250,000 renovation earlier this year, 90 percent of its parishioners are now being forced to go elsewhere if they desire to continue celebrating the TLM. Father Kevin Cusick, the parish priest, is now worried that SFDS is “on a glide path to eventual closure.” Meanwhile, Sid Marcus, who serves as the Parish Council President, said that other parishioners “feel disenfranchised and marginalized.” Moreover, “they’re sad,” he explained, because “they know they’re not going to see some of their friends again.”
Although the ADW has encouraged TLM devotees to attend service at one of the three non-parochial locations designated for the extraordinary form — including Saint Dominic’s, a mission church in Aquasco, Md., just ten minutes from SFDS — Marcus reports that many are seeking alternatives with better parking, more-regular services, and easier access to pastoral care. Some people, he says, plan on escaping the ADW altogether and will now go to Mass almost an hour away from their current parish at the National Shrine of Saint Alphonsus Liguori in the Archdiocese of Baltimore or at Saint Anthony’s Mission Church in the Diocese of Arlington, where there have been lighter restrictions on the TLM.
Others, of course, will attend Mass at one of the locations that Gregory has designated. Monsignor Pope, for example, along with several other priests, will be celebrating the TLM each Sunday at the Franciscan Monastery. “I know a lot of us are disappointed,” he said. “Cardinal Gregory knows this is hard” and “has been good to work with.” “This is where we are now,” he added, “let’s keep praying and working and growing.”
For his part, Lally has taken on the responsibility of coordinating altar servers at the Franciscan Monastery in Northeast D.C. and helping to form a choir for Sunday services there. “From now until the day that I die, I will work assiduously to make the Catholic faithful aware of the beauty of the TLM,” he said. For him, that means “joyfully following the cardinal’s wishes” while trying to make the monastery “as close to a parish home as possible.”
Despite the circumstances, Lally’s attitude is characteristic of many, if not most, of the TLM devotees in the DMV area, who are trying to make the best out of a tough situation. On Saturday, September 17, for example, 300 Catholics processed five miles from St. Thomas More Cathedral in Arlington to St. Matthew the Apostle Cathedral in Washington, D.C., as part of the National Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage for the restoration of the Latin Mass. In a speech on the steps of St. Matthew’s, Noah Peters, a local attorney, encouraged the pilgrims to continue to “pray for” and “work with” their bishops, “with the confidence that these restrictions will not and cannot last.”
When asked how they remain hopeful, TLM devotees put their hope in Jesus’s Sacred Heart. “We’re suffering, so we follow Jesus Christ,” Lally said. “I will never leave the church. . . . I will die receiving the Eucharist,” explained Mark Zelden. “We can’t let this affect our spiritual life,” added Matt Mangiaracina. “We just need to be good Catholics and get to Heaven no matter what situation we find ourselves in.”
Father Bjorn Lundberg, who is a pastor at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Winchester, Va., and the Diocese of Arlington’s delegate on the matter, perhaps put it best: “The same God who took care of us in the past is going to take care of us now and in the future. . . . The Enemy wants us divided, but we are united in our faith in Christ.”