The Latin Mass: Catholics Who Have to Worship Somewhere Else

Jessica Harvey used to worship in a church with stained glass and a soaring ceiling. The Catholic parish gave Harvey and her family a sense of community as they settled into their new hometown in Virginia. But a year later, they started worshipping at a Catholic school four miles away, in a cramped space that used to double as a ballet studio and storage room. Instead of stained glass, colored images cover the windows. Exposed ductwork hangs overhead.

Why the downgrade? Harvey’s parish was forced to relocate its traditional Latin Mass, an ancient version of the Catholic liturgy that has set off one of the fiercest controversies in modern Catholicism. In 2021, Pope Francis restricted access to the old rite and required that priests get special permission to celebrate it. The parishes that are still allowed to offer the traditional Mass can’t advertise it in their bulletin. And many Latin Mass devotees, like Harvey, no longer worship in their churches, which are largely reserved for the newer, now-standard rite. Traditionalists have been relegated in some cases to auditoriums and school gyms.

In an autobiography published earlier this year, the pope made his distaste clear, writing that he deplored the “ostentation” of priests who celebrate the old Mass in fancy vestments and lace, which can “sometimes conceal mental imbalance.” Such language stands in clear contrast to his emphasis on mercy and pastoral flexibility toward groups on the margins, such as divorced or LGBTQ Catholics.

When he issued the decree, Francis said he was trying to preserve unity in the Church, where the liturgy had become a point of particular conflict in his campaign to modernize the faith. But whether the pope seeks unity through reconciliation or suppression, he’s not succeeding. The edict has hardened and widened divisions among Catholics, alienating the Church’s small but young, ardent, and unyielding group of Latin Mass loyalists.

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