Leaked draft shows Charlotte bishop’s planned crackdown on traditional liturgical customs

CNA Staff, May 29, 2025 / 12:42 pm (CNA).

A leaked draft from Charlotte, North Carolina, Bishop Michael Martin, OFM Conv, shows the prelate’s far-reaching and highly detailed intent to crack down on what he describes as “older liturgical practices” in order to bring about “a more uniform celebration of the Mass” in the diocese. 

The lengthy letter was first published by the blog Rorate Caeli; officials with the diocese subsequently confirmed the authenticity of the letter to the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner.

The letter, which references Pope Francis in the present tense, appears to have been written prior to the late pontiff’s death last month. 

Its leak, meanwhile, comes after the Charlotte Diocese announced that it would significantly restrict the practice of the Traditional Latin Mass, limiting it to a single chapel in what Martin said was a bid to “promote the concord and unity of the Church.”

Regulations on altar candles, women’s veils, and more

The document details an extensive list of behaviors and practices that Martin said would be tightly regulated or else abolished going forward in an effort at “purifying and unifying the celebration of the Mass.”

Among the directives: Celebrants are to place candles “arranged around the altar” during Mass “since placing them on the altar will always obstruct the vision of the faithful.”

As well, priests are directed to not offer “vesting or devesting prayers” either before or after Mass, as there is “no option given in the current liturgical books” for such practices. Rather, “prayerful preparation before Mass and thanksgiving after Mass is to take place in some other way.”

Women who choose to wear veils during Mass “are not to do so when they are assisting in any official capacity,” such as when lectoring or cantoring, the document states. 

Parishes will be forbidden from using bells to signal the start of Mass, the directives say; rather, a “verbal welcome” by the lector “followed by an indication of the hymn to be sung and an invitation to stand” should be normative at all Masses. 

At times the document seems to run afoul of other, authoritative Church directives. Martin at one point writes that the Church “does not … call for the Latin language to be used widely in the liturgy,” and that the ancient language “diminishes the role of the laity in the Mass.” Yet guidance from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explicitly states that “care should be taken to foster the role of Latin in the liturgy,” with the bishops even going so far to state that singers and choir directors should “deepen their familiarity with the Latin language.” 

The bishop’s order that candles are “always to be arranged around the altar,” meanwhile, explicitly cites the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM), but the relevant portion of that document does not forbid placing candles at the front of the altar. 

The intensively detailed list has drawn criticism and backlash from some commentators. Matthew Hazell, a British liturgy scholar, told the Register that Martin’s perspective was consistent with what Pope Benedict XVI famously described as a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture.” 

“Rather than allow the novus ordo to be celebrated in a manner in keeping with its own rubrics and with the Church’s tradition, Bishop Martin seems to see it as an entirely new creation that cannot even be seen to have anything in common with what came before,” Hazell told the Register.

Father Paul Hedman, a priest from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, similarly criticized the directives, writing on X that the document appears to be “banning things explicitly allowed in the GIRM and explicitly called for in Vatican II.”

“He denigrates the practice of using water and wine for purification of the vessels,” Hedman wrote, but the GIRM “explicitly allows this.” 

The bishop “presumes the ability to regulate the private prayer of the priest before Mass,” the priest wrote further. “This is simply ridiculous and — I do not use this [word] lightly — tyrannical.”

Though the guidelines have generated intense debate and criticism, the diocese told the Register that the document was “an early draft” and is still being debated by diocesan leadership. 

“It represented a starting point to update our liturgical norms and methods of catechesis for receiving the Eucharist,” a diocesan spokeswoman said, adding that the directives will be “thoroughly reviewed” prior to their official promulgation.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/264403/leaked-draft-shows-charlotte-bishop-s-planned-crackdown-on-traditional-liturgical-customs