Like the Psalmist, we wait on the Lord. With steadfastness, we wait. With broken hearts, we wait.
The attack on the Traditional Latin Mass in Tyler, Texas this weekend has gobsmacked us all, both traditional and Novus Ordo Catholics. Why now? Why on the first anniversary of the loss of our dear bishop? The fact that the apostolic administrator, Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin, requested a ruling hints that it might be part of a negotiation.
Maybe that was the only way they could get someone to agree to come to Tyler, a tiny place by every conceivable measure, not a trampoline to higher power in the Church, and with a laity still raw over the irregular removal of our shepherd. The robust financial condition of the diocese has almost certainly suffered in the last year, as we watched the diocese fail to mount even the slightest defense of our good bishop. That left us only one avenue of recourse: pulling our contributions.
Perhaps the only way to get a bishop for Tyler was to grant him a “clean slate,” with Bishop Vásquez taking the fall for strangling the Latin Mass at the cathedral.
We knew the Vatican was coming for the TLM like a hooded rider in the night, but we thought that the diocese was going to give us a reasonable time to construct a new facility that could handle all the incoming TLM families before axing the cathedral’s TLM. But no, the issue was forced. And, apparently, the Vatican thought it “pastoral” to render the bad news on the anniversary of our grief. (Bishop Joseph Strickland was removed from his flock, without due process of any kind, on November 11, 2023.)
The Vatican needs a behavior specialist. Unity is not something that can be forced on unhappy, wounded people without any regard for their souls. I think the unity argument is a straw man anyway. This suppression of an ancient and holy rite is not about unity; it partakes of the demonic. There, I said it. For ordained clerics to hate the TLM, which brought salvation to millions of persons over hundreds of years, is a pathology.
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