Catholic social media is abuzz once again over the fate of the Traditional Latin Mass in the Diocese of Charlotte.
In a letter dated September 26, 2025, Bishop Michael Martin formally announced that, beginning October 5, the TLM will only be offered in the Diocese of Charlotte at the Chapel of the Little Flower located in Mooresville, NC.
The chapel itself can accommodate only 350 persons, less than one-third the number of persons that routinely assist at the Traditional Latin Mass in the diocese.
Martin plainly acknowledged as much, stating:
Understand that the chapel is not meant to be able to accommodate all who are currently attending the TLM in their respective parishes. I encourage you to see Little Flower Chapel as you would a shrine chapel that you might visit for Mass on occasion while participating regularly in the life of your registered parish.
In other words, Traditional Latin Mass-goers in Charlotte are not so much being phased-out as they are being phased-in, into the Wubbulous World of the Novus Ordo Missae.
Needless to say, the tradservative titans of the Resist-the-Pope movement are spinning out of control in disbelief at the senseless cruelty of it all.
Over at the Rorate Caeli blog, for example, “New Catholic” (who has been “new” at this Catholic thing for nearly two decades now) posted Martin’s letter along with the following commentary:
The letter announcing the final closure of the 4 Traditional Latin Mass venues in Charlotte is quite astounding — the Bishop even recognizes the new single place far from everywhere is not big enough for everyone, so people can just alternate Sundays, perhaps…
What a monster.
Whether or not Michael Martin is a monster is a subjective judgment. Far more important and objective, however, is what he, “New Catholic,” and the entire Resist-the-Pope crowd have in common:
Every last one of these characters is convinced that Robert Prevost, just like Jorge Bergoglio before him, is the Holy Roman Pontiff.
What the likes of “New Catholic” evidently fail to grasp is that Martin is motivated to suffocate the TLM out of existence precisely due to this shared conviction, i.e., he is merely behaving as a one who is subject to the pope – in this case, as a bishop – should be expected to behave.
In the Letter to Bishops that accompanied Traditionis Custodes, Bergoglio (stage name, Francis) made his will in the matter perfectly plain:
It is up to you to authorize in your Churches, as local Ordinaries, the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962, applying the norms of the present Motu proprio. It is up to you to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration, and to determine case by case the reality of the groups which celebrate with this Missale Romanum.
Francis went on the stress that one of the principles that the bishops are to apply when shepherding these groups is their “need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Saints Paul VI and John Paul II.”
Well, due time has arrived in Charlotte, and not because Michael Martin says so.
In late 2023, Martin’s predecessor as Ordinary of the Diocese of Charlotte, Bishop Peter Jugis, who is well known for his own devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass, sought and received a dispensation from Rome to continue offering the TLM in just four of the nine parishes that offered the traditional rite at that time.
His stated aim for seeking this dispensation for less than half of the TLM parishes in his diocese was to facilitate a “smooth and orderly transition to the new course charted by Traditionis Custodes.”
Was Jugis merely going along to get along, i.e., was he acting as a careerist?
Certainly not.
Months prior to requesting the abovementioned dispensation for the TLM, Bishop Jugis had submitted a request for early retirement (at age 66) due to a chronic kidney condition. That request was granted in April of 2024.
One might ask: So, if not to benefit his own career, why did Bishop Jugis – who has a personal attachment to the TLM – take steps that restricted the TLM to just 4 of 9 parishes?
The answer is simple: He genuinely believed that Francis was the Roman Pontiff. Period.
Importantly, the dispensation that was granted to the Diocese at Jugis’ request had an expiration date: October 2, 2025.
For this reason, Jugis’ replacement, Michael Martin, is taking the next step, seeing to it that the TLM isn’t offered in any of the Diocese’s nearly one-hundred parishes, and this in compliance with the directives set forth in Traditionis Custodes.
Martin stressed that the new TLM chapel is not a parish in any sense of the word. He writes:
This chapel is not a parish, nor is it a parish-like community being formed for those who desire to celebrate the TLM … There will not be any programming offered at Little Flower Chapel other than Sunday and Holy Day Masses, so all the other dimensions of Catholic life (sacramental and otherwise) are to be engaged in your local parish.
NB: Forget the traditional rites of Baptism, Confirmation, Marriage, etc. Rather, go to your local parish where only the stripped-down Novus Ordo rites are offered.
He’s a monster, I tell ya!
Throughout his letter, Martin encourages what he calls “faithfulness to the discipline of the Church.”
The Church carefully guides its [the Mass] celebration. This responsibility belongs to the Holy Father, in accord with the Magisterium, to discern how the liturgy best serves the good of the whole Body of Christ …
Pope Francis determined that while both [the Novus Ordo and the TLM] are equally sacramentally efficacious, promoting two forms of the same rite was instead furthering division in the liturgical discipline of the Church.
Martin is indicating that he will follow whatever liturgical directives may come from the new “Holy Father” should any ever be issued. I see no reason to doubt that this is the case.
On this note, readers may recall that Martin had initially announced back in May that the TLM would be restricted to the Mooresville location beginning on July 8, but he ended up changing his mind, extending the deadline to October.
Some in trad media, evidently high on hopium, suggested that Leo’s Rome – if not Leo himself – had stepped in and ordered Martin to pump the brakes. Go Leo!
Charlotte’s diocesan newspaper, Catholic News Herald, made it sound as if this was a pastoral decision and an act of mercy, quoting Martin as stating, “I want to listen to the concerns of these parishioners and their priests, and I am willing to give them more time to absorb these changes.”
Both scenarios, however, are nonsense.
The reality, reported by the Herald on September 28, is that “renovations are nearly complete” on the Mooresville chapel, i.e., the chapel chosen as the solitary TLM site was nowhere near ready in July. All indications are, therefore, that the extension was really all about coming to terms with construction delays.
So, what about Leo?
It appears that some tradservative commentators are slowly emerging from their Leophoric slumber and coming to terms with the fact that Prevost is nothing more than Bergoglio with a spoon full of sugar. Many are publicly calling on him to intervene in Charlotte (and elsewhere) to put an end to the abuse of sincere persons whose only crime is being devoted to the Mass of Ages.
Sorry, kids, but it’s not going to happen, at least not in any meaningful way.
Leo is a man of the Council. This much he made perfectly clear in his first address to the College of Cardinals wherein he urged them to join him in renewing “our complete commitment” to Vatican II. In this, he is of one mind with Bergoglio.
Leo, like his predecessor, is also well aware of the fact that the Council did not in any way will, suggest, or imagine that, moving forward, the TLM would persist untouched right alongside the reformed rite. As such, and fully aware of the disunity – liturgical and otherwise – that exists in the conciliar church (one of its hallmarks, actually), he is determined to do whatever is necessary to see the Council’s vision of a single revised Roman Rite brought to fruition.
It is naïve to imagine that Prevost, who made a pledge to synodality from the loggia immediately upon being introduced to the world as Leo XIV, is going to undermine those bishops who are obediently taking steps to implement Traditionis Custodes.
In his recent interview, Leo said of controversies surrounding the Traditional Latin Mass, “I’m not sure where that’s going to go.”
“It’s obviously very complicated,” he concluded.
Yea, sure. What is perfectly obvious is that Leo sees the Novus Ordo not merely as the equivalent of the TLM, but rather as the preferred form of Mass insofar as it is, in his words, “the Vatican II rite.” (Recall his “complete commitment” to the Almighty Council.)
He even went on to say, “If we celebrate the Vatican II liturgy in a proper way, do you really find that much difference between this experience and that experience?”
As Pope St. Pius X mentions more than two dozen times in the text of Pascendi, emphasis on religious experience at the expense of doctrinal and liturgical purity is a fundamental characteristic of the modernist. And yet, this is the man that some Trad, Inc. charlatans are urging their followers to somehow meet in the middle? Really?
I feel for the faithful in Charlotte and other places where the full weight of Traditionis Custodes is being brought to bear. No doubt that’s a bitter pill to swallow. This, however, is the cost of doing business so to speak with false popes who do not possess, manifest, much less love the true faith.
And we know that to them that love God all things work together unto good. (Romans 8:28)
Hopefully this trial will serve to open the eyes of the blind to the undeniable reality that neither the conciliar church presently in occupation of the Vatican, nor the Second Vatican Council that birthed it, nor the bastard rite that emerged therefrom, are actually Catholic.
No, acknowledging as much won’t result in an overnight proliferation of Traditional Latin Masses, but it’s the truth, and as Our Blessed Lord said:
I am the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (cf John 14:6, 8:32)
