St. Mary Cathedral in Austin, Texas
Posted on 02/13/2024 4:47:17 PM PST by ebb tide
St. Mary Cathedral in Austin, Texas
AUSTIN, Texas (LifeSiteNews) — The cathedral in the Diocese of Austin, Texas will discontinue its Traditional Latin Mass as of March 19, reportedly due to a decision “directly from the Vatican.”
Theologian Dr. Peter Kwasniewski shared Sunday evening on social media that, according to an “eyewitness,” it was announced at the end of Mass at the St. Mary Cathedral on February 11 that the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) will be canceled there as of March 19. Attendance at these Masses numbers from 500 to 600 people each week.
According to the witness, the Latin Masses held at 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. each Sunday will be replaced by Novus Ordo Masses facing east in Latin.
“Apparently, this came directly from the Vatican. The community was stunned,” the Mass attendee added.
Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes instructs bishops not to have Latin Masses in “parochial churches” or to establish new personal parishes at which the TLM is offered, although many bishops have since opted to preserve TLMs offered in parochial churches.
The closest indult Latin Masses that will be continued to be offered in the diocese are a 1:30 p.m. Mass at the St. Dymphna Center of St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church in Dripping Springs, 25 miles from Austin; a 4 p.m. Mass in Brenham, 90 miles from Austin; and an 11:30 a.m. Mass in Waco, 100 miles from Austin.
The traditional priestly Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) also offers Latin Mass on the second and fourth Sundays of each month in Austin at the Aiden Hotel.
Kwasniewski, a staunch defender of the priests’ rights to offer the TLM, slammed the decision in a statement, declaring, “The Catholic Church cannot abolish her most venerable rites without contradicting herself, betraying her solemn obligations, and incurring the wrath of God.”
“If there is something so wrong with the old rites that they must be eliminated, Catholicism is already disproved thereby,” he noted. He has previously pointed out that the TLM is centuries old, having been codified in 1570, and until that time only having undergone change slowly.
“If, on the other hand, the new rites were proposed simply as better for modern man and designed to fill the pews, then obviously the litmus test is pragmatic: what works, what fills the pews,” wrote Kwasniewski, alluding to the failure of the Novus Ordo to attract more Catholics to Mass. On the contrary, church attendance declined steeply after the introduction of the Novus Ordo.
For example, French historian Guillaume Cuchet has published an analysis showing that 1965, the year the Second Vatican Council ended, marked the beginning of the “collapse” of the practice of Catholicism in France.
Similar drops in Mass attendance occurred around the world after Vatican II, including in the United States. While 75 percent of U.S. Catholics attended Mass weekly in 1955, that figure had dropped to 50 percent by the mid-1990s and had further dropped to 39 percent by 2014-2017.
Kwasniewski continued, “The war of Rome against the Roman Rite is driven by false ideology and has no legality whatsoever. It’s not a ‘just war.’ Quite the contrary: it is a war of aggression.”
He went on to encourage the Catholics of Austin, “Do whatever you need to do, go wherever you need to go, in order to stay true to the Faith as embodied in the traditional liturgy… Stay with the rite that nourished our greatest saints and has nourished you until now.”
Rob Koons, a professor of philosophy, lamented the cancellation of the Austin TLM on X on Sunday.
The website dedicated to information on the Austin Latin Mass quotes Pope Benedict XVI’s defense of the TLM:
What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.
LifeSiteNews reached out to the Diocese of Austin and the St. Joseph Latin Mass Society for comment but has yet to receive a reply.
Ping
Time to demote the Cathedral to a priory so that there is room for those who wish to assist at the Traditional Mass.
Do them anyway. “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am.” Screw the Pope and the Vatican.
It will be interesting to see how many of the congregants there accept an ad orientem novus ordo in Latin (I wouldn’t accept. Not that there’s anything really wrong with such a thing if that’s your thing, but it’s the principle of the thing. I won’t accept their bullying and their illegitimate prohibition on the traditional rite)
Disturbing. It’s the Executive Order. Stoke of the pen, law of the land. No matter the guidelines issued by JP II and prior. I am a failed Catholic. But their phylacteries are broad, and their fringes long. Beware their yeast.
I am hopeful that Francis will be as successful with his suppression of the TLM as the Romans were with suppression of the early Church.
I can do the Novus Ordo if I have to. But on a regular basis I will only do either the TLM or the Ordinariate Mass.
If there are TLM Freepers who live in the Austin or San Antonio areas of Texas, and are heartbroken by this news and who no longer have access to the TLM, please consider attending the Ordinariate Mass.
The Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter is based in Houston, TX. It has its own bishop, and its parishes are all over North America. The parishes are completely independent from the geographical dioceses in which they are located, and report only to Bishop Steven Lopes, in Houston.
There is an Ordinariate parish on the outskirts of San Antonio, only 1 hour 20 minutes from downtown Austin.
Our Lady of the Atonement
15415 Red Robin Road, San Antonio, Texas, 78255
The Ordinariate Mass was approved by Pope Benedict XVI. It is said in the King’s English, and has its roots in the Sarum Mass, which predates the Tridentine Mass. St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher would have been familiar with it. It is quite reverent, is said ad orientem, and has a lot in common with the TLM. Many of the TLM folks I know here in Baltimore love it.
If you have any questions about it, please ask on this thread, or send me a private message.
Any Catholic may attend the Ordinariate Mass and receive Holy Communion. It fulfills your Sunday obligation because it is part of the Roman Catholic Church.
If you want to see what it is like, here’s a link to the Quinquagesima Mass this past Sunday at Mount Calvary Catholic Church, in Baltimore: https://youtu.be/8KvyUmwImZ4
Sadly, time to change the weekly donation flat $1.
Better yet, there's an SSPX chapel right in downtown Austin that offers the TLM every 2nd and 4th Sunday.
Great! I’ve got no beef with the SSPX and encourage people to go there if they can’t get to a diocesan TLM. I think Archbishop Lefebvre was prophetic and will one day be canonized.
The way I look at is if, for example, an orthodox pope were to write a new creed that was beautiful, completely orthodox, profound, and at the same time said “from now on, this is the only creed you can say and you are not allowed to say the Apostle’s Creed, or the Nicene Creed, even privately, under pain of excommunication,” I would have no qualms at all in disobeying him. In fact, I would feel morally obliged to disobey to assert the validity of those two creeds. Why? Because they are “of the faith” and no pope can deny me the right to pray them.
That’s how I think of the Novus Ordo and the TLM. Except that the orthodoxy and beauty of the Novus Ordo leave much to be desired. Well, the TLM is every bit (actually, more) “of the faith” as the Novus Ordo. So I feel a moral obligation to attend it to assert my right to the fullness of the faith. I prefer to do that under the auspices of a diocesan approved TLM, but if there’s not one available, I have no problem going to the SSPX.
Fortunately for me, I have equal access to both an Ordinariate Mass and a TLM (FSSP). Our TLM is well supported by our archbishop.
When I told an FSSP priest about how it was the Ordinariate Mass that led me to the TLM, he said “so it’s kind of a gateway drug!” Well put. I would encourage those who would like to go to the TLM but there is none available to them, to consider attending an Ordinariate Mass if there is one close by. Likewise, those who, like me, were/are intimidated by the Latin Mass, but want more beauty, reverence, and orthodoxy, to consider going to an Ordinariate Mass. They both are like Babette’s Feast, and the Novus Ordo is like a cookout by comparison.
And I hope his reply was, I am sorry, your message was to garbled to understand.
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