Inside the Remaining Charlotte TLM

I’ve long been an occasional visitor to the Traditional Latin Mass. Although it’s a form of the Mass that I have grown to love, the drive to the TLM was much longer than the drive to my local parish, which itself leans more traditional than the typical Novus Ordo parish. So, I would only make the trek once a month, usually on a Thursday evening, to Our Lady of Grace in Greensboro or St. Thomas Aquinas in Charlotte. I would likewise attend on major Holy Days—like Ascension Thursday, which is not celebrated on Thursday locally, being transferred to the next Sunday by an ordinary who seemed to believe that you would have more Catholics if Catholics didn’t have to act and worship like Catholics.

But when Bishop Martin shut down the Traditional Latin Mass in all parishes and forced those communities to disband, I felt compelled to join those who were banished to a remote chapel, miles away from the highway, at the end of a series of two-lane roads surrounded by cornfields. If we are supposed to be with those who grieve, then this was the place to find them. In order to express true compassion—from the Latin cum passio—one must suffer with. It requires presence. Despite Bishop Martin’s claim to his sheep that he would “commit to walk with” them, he was noticeably absent.

The holy water font was a simple, wide basin placed on a small circular wooden table just through the main entrance. For those who traveled from ornate churches like St. Ann’s in Charlotte or Our Lady of Grace in Greensboro, this must have felt like being in exile. The overhead lighting was tacky and more appropriate for a stage than a sanctuary. One could easily envision a band in place of the altar.

The chapel seems smaller when it is occupied than officially released photos indicate. Some people were forced to stand throughout the Mass. There is no choir loft or even a choir area where a small schola might gather. Instead, there was a modest group of singers huddled in a circle at the back of the room, cramped between the rear pew and the main entry door.

The chapel has no organ, so most of the Mass parts and hymns were sung a cappella. There was something beautiful about this persecuted group just continuing, doing all they could to worship with what they had. We had no hymnals, but the music choices were familiar to all anyway. By virtue of being Catholics, we speak the same language, we share this collective memory, and few things feel more uniting than that sense that our hearts have opened to the same words. We were formed to know how to worship even in the absence of aids.

In truth, the beautiful high altar seems to be a singular reminder that this is now a chapel of sacrifice, and it clashes with the rest of the room as an unintentional rebuke. A piece of elevation in a room of banality only makes clear the dwarfism of all that surrounds it.

The sound system, meant to help the priest be heard during the sermon, performed poorly, so it was a struggle to hear him. But he consoled the people by expressing that he understood them. He knew why they drove for hours to a rural town that people otherwise have no reason to visit—because lex orandi, lex credendi. How we pray reflects and informs our belief, and we desire to be transformed by what was given to us in the Mass that so many of our saints and martyrs would have found a home in.

After Mass was over and we had sung the Salve Regina, we knelt to say the prayer to St. Michael and a Memorare for the protection of the Latin Mass. They were prayers that we said together from memory because this is our faith—this we share.

It was claimed that having the Traditional Latin Mass at parishes was divisive. So, paradoxically, faithful Catholics were forcibly divided from their parish communities and sent long distances away, that they may not worship in the same spaces as their neighbors.

They were sent to a foreign place that their bishop knew was not big enough for their needs. They are prohibited from donating to its improvement, and collections are not taken. They must instead continue to donate to the parishes that no longer welcome them. We can only surmise that they are not allowed to make their worship space more functional or appropriate for the worship of the God they love. 

Those who live in western North Carolina must now travel four or five hours to arrive in Mooresville simply to go to the Traditional Latin Mass in their diocese. They have been cut off from the historic, familiar expression of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Many of those in Greensboro or Charlotte cannot make such a journey, especially families with young children or those who have economic hardships or unreliable vehicles. Let us grieve with them. Let us pray for them. Let us hope that we may be reunited soon.

A persecution from within always cuts the deepest; but these wounded people are responding as Catholics always have. Shoved into a half-hearted attempt at an ersatz chapel, they pray with only the beauty they have, and with a true unity—a conformity with the Church that has spanned the ages. Above all, they plead to Heaven: “Sing with us, ye Seraphim.” Until we can join the Church Triumphant, we will pray and worship as so many of them once did.