Charlotte’s War on Reverence: A Priesthood Undone

This essay was written for Crisis Magazine. It can be read in full there. While everyone is welcome to enjoy it, it is an essay that will be of most interest to Catholic readers and might be difficult to follow for other Christians who don’t know the Catholic faith well. The introduction follows:

The leaked Liturgical Norms document from Bishop Michael Martin of the Diocese of Charlotte reads like a parody of 1970s fervor, delivered by a tyrannical hand through a series of ironically rigid dictates. They are poised to cause direct harm to the priests of the diocese and, through their pain, to faithful parishioners.

The man who claims that the liturgy is not the place for “our preferences” has decided to turn it into his playground. While slighting the decisions of individual parishes that reflect pastoral choices, he exercised his own whim with disregard to nuance. He claimed that “there are no particularities that would allow any of us to contravene the magisterium of the Church or the rich tradition that has been handed down to us,” and then he dictated changes that are in violation of the GIRM and which denigrate every traditional practice that he had seen being exercised in the diocese.

Keep reading (freely) at Crisis Magazine.