Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte has once again secured top spot in “trad” social media circles, this time thanks to an unsent letter to his priests that was leaked to Rorate Caeli blog.
My takeaway having read the lengthy screed in full is that Martin is not only devoid of anything even remotely resembling sensus Catholicus (a prerequisite for leadership roles in the conciliar church), it also seems that he is ignorant (as in stupid), deceptive, and quite possibly gay.
Before we get to the gory details, I realize that many regular readers of this space have a who cares? attitude toward this story. I get it. The nonsense that takes place in conciliar clown world can be seen as similar in import to the antics of the Anglicans or any other heretical group.
There is, however, one major difference: The Protestant sects don’t call themselves Catholic and no one believes that they are.
The Novus Ordo church, by contrast, is fooling many naïve persons, some of whom are our family members, neighbors, and friends. Even in the case of total strangers, we should have great concern for their souls, even to the point of discovering, and showing them, evidence that demonstrates beyond any doubt that the conciliar church is a counterfeit church, one that practices a false religion. For this reason, I invite you to consider the following.
In a rant about the use of hand missals at Mass, Martin writes toward the very end of the letter:
If I were to sit down to speak to my beloved in an intimate moment of self-expression, would it be appropriate for my beloved to be reading the text (if they had it in advance) as I was speaking to her/him? Of course not!
Ooops. Is this an admission, or is it merely evidence of poor writing skills on the part of a man who has never even pondered “intimate moments” with another dude?
This letter weighs in at nearly 8,000 words. It obviously took a great deal of time and effort to write, so I doubt that its shades-of-gay are merely inadvertent. It seems just as feasible that this may be Martin’s way of letting Charlotte’s rainbow brigade know that they no longer have to fly under the gaydar, i.e., there’s a new bawth in town and he’s got your back.
To be fair, Martin might not be gay, not exclusively anyway. I mean, he did mention a “her” as well as a “him.” Then again, he also made an out of place reference to “they,” which leads one to wonder if his understanding of pronoun usage may be infected by a dash or two of wokeness.
That said, I must admit that I may be making way too much of this solitary cringeworthy sentence due to confirmation bias. To be very honest, well before I reached this part of the letter, I had already made up my mind, literally saying out loud (to my dog’s surprise, true story), “This guy’s gay as ___.”
Seriously. Any cleric focused entirely on the Mass as community “meal” (as Martin does) and is therefore repulsed by sacred signs that just might elevate the heart and mind toward heavenly things strikes me as a man dealing with a homo problem.
Is that judgmental? Yup.
Moving on…
Martin writes about “the Pentecost moment and the birth of the Church,” making it obvious that he equates the two events. WRONG: The Church was born from the Cross in the water and blood that issued forth from the Savior’s side.
Is it too much to expect a Novus Ordo Bishop to know as much? (That’s a rhetorical question. Of course it is.) In Martin’s case, it seems that ignorance alone does not tell the tale, rather, he appears to have an aversion to Sacrifice as evidenced by his reticence concerning the sacrificial nature of the Mass.
He goes on:
The Second Vatican Council, seeking to lead the faithful into the revival of our understanding of the liturgical life and our participation in it, was profoundly wise in using three unambiguous words to describe our engagement: full, conscious, and active…
Martin, solidifying his conciliar credentials, says that these three words form “the heart and foundation” of the entire letter, adding, “I would never attempt to place my words in this document among the tremendous treasure of the teachings of the Council Fathers.”
Yes, so much treasure!
From there, as expected, Martin frequently references the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II, speaking as if it fell from Heaven in the form of an exhaustive directive whereby the Holy Ghost (I mean… the Spirit) provided explicit instructions on precisely how the revised Mass must – I repeat, must – be celebrated.
It quickly becomes evident, however, that Martin doesn’t really know (or perhaps doesn’t actually care to know) exactly what the document states.
NB: Far be it for me to give anyone the impression that the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) is anything other than an indefensible train wreck that set the stage for the liturgical disaster that followed. That’s not my intent at all.
Even so, the least a conciliar clown like Michael Martin can do is to cite its poisonous contents accurately.
The fact that he doesn’t reveals that his faith (if you will allow), and that of the entire counterfeit church, is largely made up on the go. Like its Protestant cousins, the conciliar enterprise is no longer anchored in immutable Truth, much less is it motivated by a genuine desire to carry out the mission that He gave to His Church. As such, it is ever evolving into something that is increasingly unrecognizable to Catholic eyes.
For example, Martin laments:
I have encountered a frequent and prevalent use of the Latin language in our parish liturgies…
This is problematic, according to Martin:
However, the faithful’s full, conscious, and active participation is hindered wherever Latin is employed … Our ancestors “heard” the Mass in Latin every Sunday but never understood it. Their experience was the reason that the Council asked the entire Church to welcome the use of the vernacular languages (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 32.2).
This is utter and complete bull, and I don’t mean papal bull.
While the Council did express a desire to promote liturgical instruction (notably for priests as well as laity), nowhere does the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy suggest that the faithful “never understood” the Latin prayers at Holy Mass, much less does the Council claim this as “the reason” for proposing limited use of the vernacular. That’s right, limited.
NB: The actual reason given by the Council for desiring a reform of the liturgy generally speaking was provided in Article 1 of the document. It was …. wait for it … ecumenism!
It is a flat out lie to say that the faithful before Vatican II didn’t understand the Mass (to the extent that mere mortals are able to comprehend the sacred mysteries, at any rate). Many of the faithful then, as now, made use of hand missals that provide vernacular translations of the Latin text.
On top of that, his citation of “Sacrosanctum Concilium, 32.2” is errant. There is no “section 2” to article 32, which itself has nothing to say about liturgical language. What he meant to write is “Sacrosanctum Concilium, 36.2.”
Aw… c’mon. Anyone can make a mistake! Cut him some slack.
Sure, I get it, mistakes happen, but if you’re going to arrogantly accuse people – many of whom, I’d wager, are far holier and more intelligent than yourself – of being too addled to grasp Latin prayers, and you’re going to use the conciliar text as an authoritative battering ram against them, you damn well ought to get your references right. So, no, I will not cut him any slack.
Martin went on to state:
The Latin language, no doubt, holds a special and official role within the Latin Church (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 32.1). In fact, all official texts, documents, and ritual books are published in Latin as the editio typicafrom which the vernacular translations are derived. The Church even exhorts that the Latin language be studied in seminaries and theological studies (cf. John XIII, Veterum sapientiae). The Church does not, however, call for the Latin language to be used widely in the liturgy.
Once again, the article to which he refers is incorrect, it’s actually 36.1, and guess what? It does not say what Martin claims it says. It reads:
Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites. (ibid.)
NB: This article says exactly nothing about a generic “special and official role” for Latin in the Church, rather, it speaks very specifically about the preservation of Latin in the Latin rites.
As for the matter of how widely, or not, the Latin language is to be preserved vs use of the vernacular, Martin has it exactly backward. The Constitution merely says of the vernacular that “the limits of its employment may be extended.” (SC 36.2) [Emphasis added]
At several points in his laborious and dishonest missive, Martin makes great hay over what is allowed, what is forbidden, and what goes unmentioned in the Novus Ordo Missal and its accompanying General Instruction. Even so, he never mentions the fact that neither one prescribes a certain amount of vernacular, nor does either one proscribe the use of Latin.
The letter does include some noteworthy moments of honesty, however, for instance, when Martin bemoans the following:
At some places in our diocese, there tends to be a recurring tendency to attempt a reclamation of the rubrics, actions, and sensibilities of the Missal of 1962 or pre-Vatican liturgical customs and to implement them in the celebration of the Novus Ordo Missae.
NB: The big issue here concerns the outward signs that point to the Mass as the propitiatory Sacrifice of the Cross. We must admit that Martin is on to something important when he states of traditional “rubrics and actions” being inserted into the Mass of Paul VI:
…it communicates to the faithful that the Novus Ordo in itself does not have the power or capacity of transmitting the full gift of God’s sacramental work and graces.
In truth, the Novus Ordo has no such power or capacity of its own.
I dare say that Martin’s observations draw far closer to reality than the actions of those priests who think they are providing a service to the flock by dressing up the Novus Ordo in Latin and lace, smells and bells, and sometimes even an ad orientem posture, when all they are really doing is fooling everyone in the building including themselves.
Speaking of ad orientem worship in the Novus Ordo, Martin insists, “the Church has been clear that ad orientem is not appropriate.”
While some may think it charitable to say that this is “incorrect,” let’s not pretend to be as ignorant as Mickey Martin. This isn’t a mistake, it’s a lie. Surely he knows that the General Instruction on the Roman Missal simply states:
The altar should be built separate from the wall, in such a way that it is possible to walk around it easily and that Mass can be celebrated at it facing the people, which is desirable wherever possible. (GIRM 299)
What’s more, the Novus Ordo Missal itself seems to assume an ad orientem posture on the part of the priest.
To his credit, Martin makes no apology for his Protestant understanding of the Protestant rite known as the Novus Ordo, nor should he: It’s exactly what Bergoglio said it is, namely, “the unique lex orandi” of the Roman Rite [sic] for the conciliar church.
Martin, making plain his view of the Novus Ordo, issues the following directives to his priests:
The understanding and appreciation of the Eucharistic Liturgy as a meal suggests that, where possible, symbolism of ritual meal be made most clear and manifest … Again, ciboria containing the sacred hosts that are more like a chalice (cup) in structure than a dish mitigates the symbolism of meal … The use of vestiture for the chalice and patten or for the ciboria similarly lessens the power of symbolic meal and has more connection to a veiled theology more common in the liturgy prior to the Novus Ordo.
Again, Martin is simply speaking truth. The theology expressed by the Traditional Latin Mass is not the same as the message inextricably embedded in the Novus Ordo. The former is a true Sacrifice ordered unto salvation for all eternity, the latter, a Happy Meal intended to fuel earthbound random acts of kindness. As Martin says:
The Mass and all the sacraments are for us to ultimately be sent and to serve, which is the ultimate meaning of a life that is full, conscious, and active.
Get that? Ultimately, i.e., the pinnacle of its purpose. There he goes again, speaking honestly. The Bogus Ordo, unlike the one true Roman Rite, has little to do with atonement for the sins of the living and the dead unto life everlasting.
Despite twice giving lip service to the “altar of sacrifice” (lower case “s”), it comes as little surprise that Martin saw fit to criticize priests who diligently purify the sacred vessels, as if they genuinely believe that Christ is truly present – Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity – in every fragment of the Blesses Sacrament.
Similarly, searching for the faintest dust particles on a patten misses an authentic understanding of the accidents and substance of the Eucharist.
More could be written about Michael Martin’s leaked letter to his priests, which, to my knowledge, remains unsent as of this writing.
That, however, doesn’t make it irrelevant.
As previously stated, the entire conciliar enterprise is no longer anchored in immutable Truth, much less is it motivated by a genuine desire to carry out the mission that Christ gave to His Church.
Michael Martin of Charlotte has inadvertently done a great service to those who are sincerely seeking the true religion. His move to suppress the Latin Mass, and the letter under discussion here, show us far more than just the faithlessness of one man, rather, both of them serve as an indictment of the Vatican II church, revealing for all to see that it is a false religion built on shifting sand.
