CNA Staff, Apr 16, 2025 / 16:48 pm (CNA).
Archbishop Edward Weisenburger of Detroit announced Wednesday that parish churches in the archdiocese that offer the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) will be unable to do so after July 1, citing the Vatican’s 2023 clarification that diocesan bishops do not possess the authority to allow the TLM to be celebrated in an existing parish church.
A prominent Detroit shrine will still be able to offer the TLM, however, and Weisenburger said he intends to identify at least four non-parish locations in the archdiocese where the TLM can be celebrated.
In an April 16 announcement, the archdiocese said Weisenburger, who was appointed in February and newly installed as archbishop last month, recently told his priests that he is unable to renew the prior permissions given to parish churches to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, and thus those permissions will expire on July 1.
At issue is Pope Francis’ consequential apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes, issued in July 2021. Among other provisions, the letter directed bishops to designate one or more locations in which priests can celebrate the TLM but specified that those locations could not be within an existing parish church.
Following Traditionis Custodes, bishops in some dioceses that already had thriving Latin Mass communities within parish churches — in places like Denver; Lake Charles, Louisiana; and Springfield, Illinois — granted broad dispensations that allowed parishes to continue offering the Latin Mass as before.
In February 2023, however, the Vatican issued a clarification to Traditionis Custodes to halt this approach, stating that bishops alone cannot dispense these parishes and that such an action is reserved “to the Apostolic See.” Bishops in other dioceses who received Vatican approval to dispense certain parishes from Traditionis Custodes were only granted that permission for a temporary period.
“The Holy See has reserved for itself the ability to allow the Traditional Latin Mass to be celebrated in parish churches. Local bishops no longer possess the ability to permit this particular liturgy in a parish church,” the announcement from the Detroit Archdiocese reads.
“With this in mind, the prior permissions to celebrate this liturgy in archdiocesan parish churches — which expire on July 1, 2025 — cannot be renewed.”
The ministry of St. Joseph Shrine in Detroit, which offers daily Traditional Latin Masses under the care of the canons of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP), will continue, Weisenburger said. ICKSP, an institute whose priests celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass and live according to the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales, has been offering the TLM at the St. Joseph Shrine since 2016.
“In addition to the exception referenced above, the Traditional Latin Mass may be permitted by the local bishop to be celebrated in non-parish settings (typically chapels, shrines, etc.),” the archdiocesan announcement continues.
“It is the archbishop’s intention to identify a non-parish setting where the Traditional Latin Mass may be celebrated in each of the archdiocese’s four regions. As noted above, and in accordance with recent decisions by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, these locations will not be parish churches. Once these locations are determined, they will be shared with the faithful.”
Former Detroit archbishop Allen Vigneron, who led the archdiocese from 2009 until his resignation at the customary age of 75 in February, issued guidelines following Traditionis Custodes allowing parishes to request permission to continue to offer the TLM within certain limits. Those guidelines came into force on July 1, 2022.
Detroit is not the first diocese to have announced an end to the TLM in parish churches as a result of the Vatican’s clarification. In 2022, Bishop Stephen Parkes of Savannah, Georgia, announced his diocese’s cessation of Traditional Latin Masses by May 2023, saying the permission he had sought and received from the Vatican to allow two parish churches to continue offering the TLM had expired.
Other dioceses, such as Albany, New York, in 2023, revoked the permission it had previously given for two parishes to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass in order to comply with the Vatican’s February 2023 clarification.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Some bishops are beyond stupid. Some are even evil.
Without contesting the new restrictions in DETROIT, and without answering the question how many Latin Mass devotees have failed to read the Vatican II Documents—or how many Novus Ordo attendees have done the same(!), yours truly simply recalls a Jesuit priest (1921-2015) who was both Catholic and yet preferred the Novus Ordo Mass…
In the post-Vatican II and mid-1970s, and as part of a long series of private letters spanning more than three decades, he wrote the following prescient analysis for today’s schizophrenic and liturgically divided moment:
“The source of truth is reality. Reality is the Blessed Trinity. The Trinity consists of the relationship among the Persons. We must plunge into that relationship in order to ‘see’ intellectually what reality is. One must start with the principle of truth outside of oneself [!] if one is looking for answers to questions insoluble by human experience [….] The difference between religion and revelation is the difference between nature and supernature [!], between fallen man and redeemed man. The social scientist begins and ends with fallen man without admitting that he is fallen. He extrapolates from natural science which is a series of changing educated guesses.
“[About the gutted curriculum at his Jesuit university] The core curriculum has been virtually destroyed as the ordained barbarians who ‘run’ this place threw out half the Western Civilization survey, retained only one English lit course, insisted that the students replace two histories with social science, and dumped the language requirement on the reasoning that since one committee voted to retain it and another voted to cashier it, ‘I, the president, decree that it is abolished [….] We need more sanctity now, less scholarship. These are Augustinian times [!], not Aristotelian (Athens was dead) nor Thomistic (who wrote at the height of the medieval summer).”
QUESTION: Paralleling the liturgical divide as now in Detroit—but more broadly about amnesia and social-science memory-cleansing…just wondering, here, whether Cardinal Grech might clarify any difference between the town hall “Ecclesial Assembly” in Rome in 2028, and the disastrous and later-repudiated “Call to Action” culminating in DETROIT in 1976?
Will the “walking together” crescendo in 2028 be a final rupture? Or, instead, in step with the living and leavening Tradition, and a follow-up and real “synod of bishops”—and accountable to “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13:8)?
Who wrote the letters?
If someone is attending Mass why would it matter you’re attending a very reverent form?
Read! in my reverent opinion (above), it’s not about reverence or even one form of the Mass over another…
It’s about replacing the transcendent, “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium) of the Eucharistic Church, with a constructed, conglomerate, and social-science imposter.
A subversion of the needed effort to realize sacramental “communio” among the ordained clergy and the laity, but who still “differ in kind as well as degree” (Gaudium et Spes). How is the procedural “Ecclesial Assembly” NOT a populist burial rite for the Vatican II Documents?
It shouldn’t matter knowall & it makes you wonder why it should matter & to whom?
If the TLM & traditional worship are attracting young people today, a population we’re told that have been fleeing from organized religion, what purpose would it suit to suppress that? I don’t know. It’s like someone in Rome has a death wish for the Western Church. No young people, no future.
Sadly, I do know there’s a small, fringe element in traditional Catholicism that’s obsessed with scapegoating conspiracy theories , some involving Jewish infiltration of the Church & corruption of the liturgy. I’ve had to suspend attendance at a local TLM because of that. We were instructed this year to not kneel during the Good Friday prayers for the Jewish people. It’s very distressing. But that’s not at all what I’ve experienced at other TLM Masses & I’ve been attending those ever since Pope Benedict made it an option. Most of the TLM community I’ve known are fair-minded , decent, devout Catholics.
I think when you suppress something like the TLM that people are deeply attached to they feel disregarded & demeaned by their shepherds & they can begin listening to other voices. Some of those voices are quite troubled & can lead us down disturbing rabbit holes.
The directive against kneeling seems a bit much and may indeed be misguided and otherwise problematic, but I would have to know the rationale behind it to see if it has any theological and liturgical legitimacy before making a more complete assessment. In any case, let’s also remember that the Good Friday prayer is not just for the Jews in general, but for their acceptance of Jesus and conversion to the Church.
Version of the Good Friday Prayer by Pope Benedict XVI:
Let us pray also for the Jews:
May our God and Lord enlighten their hearts, so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, savior of all men.
Almighty and everlasting God, who desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of truth, mercifully grant that, as the fullness of the Gentiles enters into Thy Church, all Israel may be saved. Through Christ Our Lord.
Amen.
Granted the Eucharist is the Eucharist no matter who, what surrounds it. Arguments can be made for greater grace and efficacy of its effects the greater the love of the participants.
How do we express love? Are some signs more reverential, more solemn, more respectful than others? To mark an engagement, does the groom buy the bride-to-be a precious stone from Tiffany, or does he order an Amazon rhinestone?
For sacred liturgical vessels, do earthen and plain glass send the same message as precious-metal vessels? Do vestments and lay clothes demonstrate virtue and care or do they demonstrate a come-as-we-are, dirty, wrinkled, immodestly clothed? Do we turn to every neighboring parishioner to meld our dirty hands as a sign of solidarity, or do we wish to not touch (as Jesus asked Mary Magdalene on the first Easter)? Do we then directly receive Him through open, clean, and fasting mouths only from the hands of the priest who has consecrated the host that day? Do we sing ‘modern’ songs with people as their lyrical focus or do we aim to imitate celestial chant and praise with the Word in lyrical mind? Do the laity arrive late and leave early? Does the congregation clap for Mass participants for various reasons during the Mass? Is there extraneous talking and greeting among the congregants just prior to Mass and perhaps even during it or does silent time allow 1:1 contemplative thought with the Lord? Do congregants raise and lower kneelers with loud bangs at various points throughout the liturgy, or do kneelers remain down and actually in use? Are the gestures and attitudes of the priest done with a reveling performative gloss, talking about himself, or does he talk and teach the Lord?
There is more, with these just a few off the top. Yet the Eucharist is still the Eucharist. But a holy priest will convey more grace to his congregation, to the world and to the church than a priest who proves himself a la Rupnik, McCarrick, Martin, and their ilk.
Nothing infuriates Bergoglio’s Dark Vatican more than faithful Catholic priests celebrating the Catholic Mass as it’s been offered for some 1,800 years.
Not sodomy. Not heteropraxy. Not concubinage. Not abortion.
This tells you all you need to know about the spirit that’s behind the Bergoglian captivity.
It ain’t holy.