I will never again celebrate the Novus Ordo

After waiting nearly six months to hear back from the Bishop of Galveston-Houston, the Most Reverend Joseph Fiorenza, Father Stephen Zigrang, the pastor of Saint Andrew’s Church in Channelview, Texas, announced on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, Sunday, June 29, 2003, that he will never again celebrate the Novus Ordo. Father Zigrang made this announcement at the Saturday evening anticipation Mass on June 28, 2003, and at each of the three Sunday Masses on the actual feast of Saints Peter and Paul. To emphasize his intention in this regard, each of these four parish Masses were celebrated according to the Missale Romanum issued by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Parishioners were told that they had to receive Holy Communion kneeling and on the tongue.

Father Zigrang, 53, who holds a licentiate in canon law (J.C.L.), has been pastor of Saint Andrew’s Church in Channelview, which is located about twenty miles due east of downtown Houston just off of Interstate 10, for six years. A tireless and indefatigable pastor of souls, Father Zigrang, who has been ordained for twenty-six years, instituted Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in the parish, making himself available to fill in for an adorer who is unable to keep his appointed hour. Father Zigrang makes his own Communion calls to the sick, meets weekly with the Legion of Mary, holds adult education classes, is very solicitous of the sacramental and temporal needs of home schooling parents, and takes groups of pilgrims to various Marian shrines around the country, including the Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor in New Orleans, Louisiana. He makes himself available at any time of the day or night to counsel families in need, helping to save foundering marriages in many instances. He made the 2002 Chartres Pilgrimage, which processes seventy-two miles from Notre Dame in Paris to Notre Dame in Chartres over the course of three days. He will rouse himself from a sound sleep to hear the Confession of a soul who is in need of the sacramental forgiveness of his sins that only an alter Christus can give.

Father Zigrang had served on the marriage tribunal of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, where some of his fellow canon lawyers found him to be too “rigid” in his refusal to accept grounds of nullity offered by petitioners, some of whom were powerful and influential Houstonians close to Bishop Fiorenza. He also taught at the diocesan major seminary (theologate), where he distinguished himself as an exceptional teacher of dogmatic and moral theology. Considered by many of his fellow priests as something of an eccentric because of his doctrinal orthodoxy and the care with which he presented himself as a priest by the wearing of his cassock in public, Father Zigrang became even more of a pariah among his fellow priests when he began to take an interest in and to develop a devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass back in 1997. Father applied himself assiduously to the study of solid liturgical history, coming to understand that it is in the Mass of our fathers that God is best worshipped and human souls are better sanctified.

Father Zigrang began to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass privately in his rectory in 1998, making it known to traditionally-minded Catholics that his rectory door would be open at around 6:00 a.m., at which time he heard confessions prior to his 6:30 a.m. morning Traditional Latin Mass. Father Zigrang even began offering the Traditional Latin Mass publicly in 2000, offering it at 7:30 a.m. on Sundays as part of the official parish Mass schedule. Bishop Fiorenza found out about this in 2001, telephoning Father Zigrang to find out if the reports of the phenomenon were true. Father Zigrang told him that they were true, whereupon Bishop Fiorenza ordered him to stop. Father Zigrang explained that he did not believe that he needed a bishop’s permission to celebrate the Mass that has never been suppressed and is indeed incapable of being suppressed, but he said that he would obey the bishop’s edict. Father Zigrang did, though, ask Bishop Fiorenza if he had his permission to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass privately. Bishop Fiorenza said that he did.

As more time passed, however, Father Zigrang recognized that he could not much longer abide the profane nature of the Novus Ordo, the invasion of the sanctuaries by lectors and extraordinary ministers and altar girls, the banal and offensive music offered by those involved in “music ministry,” the sacrilege of Communion in the hand, having to administer Holy Communion to the faithful while they stood to receive the King of kings and the Lord of lords, having to stand behind a freestanding altar to offer Holy Mass facing the people, and the very prayers of the Novus Ordo that do not as fully communicate the truths of the Faith as those contained in the Traditional Latin Mass. He consulted with like-minded priests around the nation. Bishop Bernard Fellay of the Priestly Fraternity of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X spent four hours with him several years ago to discuss his situation. He knew that the day would have to come, sooner rather than later, when he would have to make a break with the Novus Ordo.

As Father Zigrang is very much attached to the people of his parish, his fondest wish, expressed in a letter sent to Bishop Fiorenza on January 17, 2003, was that his own bishop would permit him to transform Saint Andrew’s Church in Channelview into a fully traditional parish. Barring that, it was his hope that Bishop Fiorenza would permit him to open a small chapel under diocesan auspices where he could offer the Traditional Latin Mass and all of the sacraments in the traditional rite.

There are approximately twenty dioceses in the nation that permit the daily celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass with all of the sacraments (Worcester, Massachusetts; Paterson, New Jersey; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Youngstown, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; Little Rock, Arkansas; Dallas, Texas; Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Indianapolis, Indiana; Rapid City, South Dakota; Denver, Colorado; Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska; Rockford, Illinois; LaCrosse, Wisconsin; Sacramento, California; Richmond, Virginia). The Holy Father has called for a wide and generous application of his 1988 Ecclesia Dei motu proprio ad afflicta. There are moves afoot for the Vatican to extend full recognition to the Society of Pope Saint Pius X and to extend a universal indult to permit every priest in the world to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass without securing the permission of his local bishop. The Bishop of Venona, Italy, is permitting priests of the Society of Pope Saint Pius X to celebrate his diocesan indult Traditional Latin Mass on the third Sunday of every month. Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz did permit the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, which was erected by Pope John Paul II in 1988, to build Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in his diocese. Thus, Father Zigrang is not to be considered mentally ill or emotionally unbalanced for requesting his bishop to offer the Mass of our fathers on a daily basis for those Catholics in the Diocese of Galveston-Houston who want to worship God in the manner in which all Latin rite Catholics prayed at Holy Mass for the better part of 1500 years.

Bishop Fiorenza, however, ignored Father Zigrang’s letter. Father Zigrang took an incremental move in April of this year, announcing from the pulpit that he would refuse from that point onward to distribute Holy Communion in the hand. Father Zigrang decided ultimately to make his historic announcement in his parish on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, thereby giving his parishioners public notice of why they might never see him again in Saint Andrew’s Church. He also gave his parishioners an opportunity to hear the Mass of our fathers. Not everyone, according to the reports that have given this writer by eyewitnesses, was pleased by what Father Zigrang did (the folks with the guitars for the “folk Mass” were said to be somewhat upset when they had been preempted by the Traditional Latin Mass, as were some lectors and extraordinary ministers). However, many parishioners were in awe of what they had witnessed, coming to understand the profound difference between the Traditional Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo: that the Traditional Latin Mass is about the worship of God by the offering of the unbloody sacrifice of the Cross to the Father in Spirit and truth, a propitiatory sacrifice for sins. It is not about the deification of man or the glorification of self or, God help us, entertaining the congregation.

The reaction from the chancery offices of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston was immediate. The same people who would do or say nothing if a priest advocated contraception from the pulpit or supported women’s ordination or put into question (if not denied altogether) the historicity of the miracles of Our Lord acted with great swiftness when word had reached them of what Father Zigrang had said and done at Saint Andrew’s Church.

Efforts were made on Monday, June 30, 2003, by Bishop Fiorenza to contact Father Zigrang, who was out making sick calls. The chancery office reached Father Zigrang that evening, telling him that the bishop wanted to meet with him the following morning, July 1, 2003.

As he was en route to make more sick calls when he went to the chancery office to meet with Bishop Fiorenza, Father Zigrang had a pyx containing Hosts on his person. The bishop noticed a bulge in his pocket, asking, “Do you have the Sacramental Presence on you?” The meeting was polite and without any rancor. Bishop Fiorenza showed Father Zigrang a letter he had prepared to tell him that any further public celebration of the “Mass of Pope Saint Pius V” would lead to his being removed as pastor of Saint Andrew’s Church and the suspension of his priestly faculties by the diocese. Father Zigrang was given twenty-four hours to leave the rectory. (A copy of Bishop Fiorenza’s July 1 letter is reproduced in this issue of The Remnant. Readers can judge it for themselves.)

Preparing to leave the rectory the following morning, July 2, 2003, Father Zigrang received a somewhat conciliatory phone call from Bishop Fiorenza. The bishop told Father Zigrang that he would be willing to hold off a suspension for the time being while giving Father Zigrang two months to “think things over,” to go on retreat, perhaps even think about getting some psychiatric counseling. Thus, although he has vacated the rectory at Saint Andrew’s, Father Zigrang remains the canonical pastor of the parish, at least through the next sixty days or so. Father Zigrang did ask Bishop Fiorenza to put the terms spelled out in that July 2 conversation in a letter. The bishop agreed.

As of July 5, 2003, Father Zigrang has not yet received the second letter from Bishop Fiorenza, although it was expected to be waiting for him at the rectory by the time substitute priests, both of whom were students of his at Saint Mary’s Seminary in Houston, read a letter from Bishop Fiorenza to the parishioners of Saint Andrew’s in Channelview on Saturday evening, July 5, 2003, and Sunday morning, July 6, 2003. The contents of both letters will be reported in the next issue of The Remnant.

This writer reached the Chancellor of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, Monsignor Frank Rossi, via telephone late on Friday, July 4, 2003. The purpose of the phone call was to confirm that Monsignor Rossi had telephoned Father Zigrang’s father to express the diocese’s concern about his son’s psychological health. Monsignor Rossi contended that it was Mr. Zigrang who had initiated the phone contact with his office, that he, Monsignor Rossi, was merely sharing with him a mutual concern about Father Zigrang’s emotional well-being. It is unclear at this writing what the exact sequence of events is in this regard. Those close to the situation tell this writer that Mr. Zigrang, who knew nothing of the events that had transpired with his son the previous day, was contacted by chancery officials early on Monday, June 30, 2003, in order to find out Father Zigrang’s cellular phone number. Who telephoned whom first and for what reason after that point is a matter under investigation. What is clear, however, is that Monsignor Rossi either confirmed Mr. Zigrang’s misgivings about his son’s actions or planted a seed of doubt about his son’s psychological health in the phone call Monsignor Rossi admitted he had with Mr. Zigrang. Other reported details of that conversation remain under investigation.

Father Zigrang is a courageous apostle, whose love for Our Lady is such that this writer once saw him nearly break down and weep when reading a beautiful passage about her contained in Pope Leo XIII’s 1893 encyclical letter on the Holy Rosary. He cares only about what is best suited to the worship of the Blessed Trinity and most conducive to the sanctification and salvation of souls redeemed by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord’s Most Precious Blood. He is in need of our prayers and our support. There are many of his parishioners who dearly love him and want him to remain as their pastor as he exemplifies Our Lord in all he does. A family who had driven some distance on July 3, 2003, to go to confession and spend time before the Blessed Sacrament in the Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration Chapel before a regularly scheduled evening Mass were very distraught to find that their confessor and spiritual director had been told to leave the parish. They have been orphaned by the unwillingness of Bishop Fiorenza to consider the fact that priests devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass such as Father Zigrang are quite effective in their pastoral work precisely because of their fidelity to that which has been handed down to them by the Church herself over the centuries.

Father Zigrang understands that the sacrifice he is making in behalf of the Traditional Latin Mass might result in severe canonical penalties being imposed upon him. However, as one who is totally consecrated to Our Lady’s Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, he will offer Our Lady whatever punishment comes his way for being faithful to the spirit of the Collect contained in Traditional Latin Mass for the Feast day on which he offered the Mass of our fathers for his parishioners and made his historic announcement:

“O God, who hast made holy this day with the martyrdom of Thine apostles Peter and Paul: grant that They Church may in all things follow the precepts of those from whim it first received the Faith. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

His fidelity to that which he has received from the Church herself, he knows, will, please Our Lord, bear beneficial fruit for the Traditional Latin Mass in ways that he will only see in eternity. What he has done is truly historic. It is without precedent, at least in the United States of America. While other priests have left their diocesan posts or religious communities to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass exclusively, this is the first instance in which a diocesan pastor not only publicly announced that he would never again celebrate the Novus Ordo but did so in the context of offering the Mass of our fathers on a Sunday as part of his parish’s regular Mass schedule. He is evidencing the willingness to be misunderstood even by members of his own family, no less by his brother priests and some of his parishioners. He is demonstrating quite courageously a willingness to eschew all of his pastoral privileges precisely because he understands, as did the English martyrs, that it is the Mass that matters. I, for one, am honored to know him and even more privileged to be his friend.

It is, though, as a son of the Church, who understands the hierarchical nature of the Church Our Lord founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, that I make this direct, personal appeal to Bishop Fiorenza:

Father Stephen Zigrang is an exemplary Catholic priest. He cares about the salvation of souls and the worship of God. He has dedicated himself tirelessly to the flock at Saint Andrew’s that has been entrusted to his pastoral care unto their Particular Judgments.

As your subject and as your brother priest, he wrote to you nearly six months ago to make a request that is neither extraordinary nor outrageous. If he served in any one of the dioceses listed above, he would be permitted by his Ordinary to minister to the spiritual needs of Catholics who, as the Holy Father noted in his Ecclesia Dei motu proprio fifteen years ago, are attached to the traditional Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, a rite that His Eminence Dario Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos reminded the world on May 24, 2003, in Santa Maria Maggiore has never been abrogated and is incapable of being abrogated. Certainly, your Excellency is aware that the Holy Father himself may authorize either a universal indult for the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass and/or an Apostolic Administration, organized somewhat along the lines of the Campos, Brazil, agreement of late 2001, to provide traditional priests with a canonical protection they do not now enjoy.

Father Zigrang has deep pastoral solicitude for souls, your Excellency. You are the spiritual father of every Catholic within your diocesan boundaries, including traditional Catholics. The Holy Father has demonstrated repeatedly his pastoral solicitude for traditional Catholics by erecting over 100 new religious communities composed of priests who celebrate Mass according to the 1962 Missale Romanum issued by Blessed Pope John XXIII. The Holy Father has urged the world’s bishops to accommodate the spiritual thirst of traditional Catholics. Approximately twenty of your brother bishops in this country, to say nothing of the scores more worldwide, permit the exact thing that Father Zigrang is requesting of you. Are they in need of psychiatric counseling? Is the Holy Father in need of a retreat because he desires to reach a rapprochement with the Society of Pope Saint Pius X before he dies?

Some bishops in the United States claim that an effort on their part to accommodate the “demands,” as they term them, from traditional Catholics would lead to division and confusion in their dioceses. With all due respect, your Excellency, is it not the case, functionally speaking, that the new Mass has engendered division and confusion by virtue of the fact that every parish has a slightly different way of “doing the liturgy.” In an age in which you and many of your brother bishops speak of sensitivity and diversity, why cannot you find it in your pastoral heart to be sensitive to the needs of Catholics who simply want to pray Holy Mass the way it has been prayed for nearly 1,500 years? Most of the saints of the Church heard the Traditional Latin Mass and were inspired by its beauty and perfection to scale the heights of sanctity. Cannot a diocesan ordinary recognize that there are Catholics who believe that it is a good thing to have a continuity with the Mass that produced such illustrious examples of sanctity and heroism in defense of the Faith?

It seems as though your Excellency gives great latitude to priests and nuns and teachers and seminary professors who put into question articles contained in the Deposit of Faith while you pounce on a priest who concludes that nearly six months of silence from you as betokening your consent to do what every priest in the Roman rite had done until 1969, something that the Holy See itself may be encouraging even more vigorously later this year. Father Stephen Zigrang is neither mentally ill nor emotionally distraught. He is a Catholic priest who is asking his spiritual father to give him permission to do in your diocese what is done in so many other places in the world under diocesan authority.

It is the duty of every Catholic to pray for the world’s bishops. Our prayer for you at this moment, your Excellency, is that you will have a big enough heart to enfold traditional Catholics in your flock and to permit them the great privilege of being fed by a son of Our Lady, Father Stephen Zigrang.

(The editor of the Texas Catholic Herald, Mrs. Annette Gonzales Taylor, who also serves as a spokeswoman for Bishop Fiorenza, is responding to inquiries from the press as follows: “Father Zigrang has not been suspended. At this time, Bishop Fiorenza and Father Zigrang remain in conversation.” This is the statement she read to me over the telephone on July 2, 2003. It is also the statement she read to Peter Miller, the editor of . I told Mrs. Taylor that I would be e-mailing her questions as future events warranted. Such questions were e-mailed on Thursday, July 3, 2003. As she is out of the office until July 8, 2003, we expect her to answer those questions forthwith. Her replies will be included in the next issue of The Remnant. This story is going to press at present because of its historic nature.)

Readers interested in sharing a few thoughts with Bishop Fiorenza on the Father Zigrang development can send letters to the following address:


Lighten Up, Francis!
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I recently spoke to some of my friends in this diocese, as well as some traditionalist canonist friends of mine. From them, I learned:

1) There is a regular Latin Mass in the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, although it is celebrated according to the 1969 liturgical usage.

2) While Bishop Fiorenza had not approved Fr. Steve's previous regular private celebration of the Tridentine liturgy, he was being quite accomodating about it and was basically turning a blind eye toward it.

3) What got Fr. Steve in trouble was when he announced, without first obtaining the permission of the bishop, to his parish that he would now only celebrate Mass exclusively according to the tridentine Mass. Especially given the fact that the parish was not reserved for its usage, Fr. Steve's unilateral decision was not fair to the vast majority of his parishoners who have become accustomed to the Novus Ordo.

4) Both the bishop and the diocese are hoping that this conflict will be resolved peacefully. They don't want to see Fr. Steve isolate himself from the diocese.

5) A number of canonists with strong ties to the Ecclesia Dei movement are in big uproar over this, because Fr. Steve's actions could force a strong canonical backlash that undermines years of progress in terms of canon law and the traditionalist movement. The only reason they have not ganged up on Fr. Steve is because a few liberal canonists, one with ties to the diocese, feel that it could aggravate the diocesan situation with Fr. Steve which these same liberal canonists are hoping will come to a peaceful resolution.

"Father Zigrang, 53, who holds a licentiate in canon law (J.C.L.), has been pastor of Saint Andrew’s Church in Channelview, which is located about twenty miles due east of downtown Houston just off of Interstate 10, for six years. A tireless and indefatigable pastor of souls, Father Zigrang, who has been ordained for twenty-six years, instituted Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in the parish, making himself available to fill in for an adorer who is unable to keep his appointed hour. Father Zigrang makes his own Communion calls to the sick, meets weekly with the Legion of Mary, holds adult education classes, is very solicitous of the sacramental and temporal needs of home schooling parents, and takes groups of pilgrims to various Marian shrines around the country, including the Shrine of Our Lady of Prompt Succor in New Orleans, Louisiana. He makes himself available at any time of the day or night to counsel families in need, helping to save foundering marriages in many instances. He made the 2002 Chartres Pilgrimage, which processes seventy-two miles from Notre Dame in Paris to Notre Dame in Chartres over the course of three days. He will rouse himself from a sound sleep to hear the Confession of a soul who is in need of the sacramental forgiveness of his sins that only an alter Christus can give."

May the lord God bless us all with such wonderful priests. but the good father should be a little more obedient and just clean up the abominations of the Nervous Disorder Mess when he ofers it. Priests all take a vow of obedience, but are they not disobedient to Jesus Christ when they offer banal abomination masses in obedience to their apostate bishops? What a mess we are in. There are no easy answers down at our level.

They can send him to us!

We are close friends with a wonderful old priest who was ordained the same year as the Pope. Couple years ago, he could stand it no longer, refused to say anything but the canonized Mass of St. Pius V. No more Novus Ordo.

He had the guts to stand up to the bishop, and walked out. He now has a small chapel and a group of loyal, grateful parishioners. Moreover he is thrilled that he has come home to the faith he knew decades ago and to say the very same Mass a part of his early priesthood.

He regrets that he didn't do it sooner.

"Considered by many of his fellow priests as something of an eccentric because of his doctrinal orthodoxy"

Oh, what a giveaway.

Do you need anything more to understand the situation?

In their eyes, doctrinal orthodoxy is "eccentric."

We need a superhero, a Catholic superhero. "Anathema Man." Clad in a black suit, clerical collar, and bad haircut, he swoops down on rogue diocese like this one in his Anathemamobile (a 1978 Gremlin, fitted with the latest modernism detection equipment), and, wielding his mystical censer that shoots laicization rays and sucks in the smoke of Satan, he restores canon law and order wherever he goes.

"Daddy, who was that man with his collar turned around backwards? And what are all these statues in the church? And what did he mean by, 'Stations of the Cross?' And how come the bishop is working at the gas station now?"

"I don't know who he was, son, but we can worship in peace again. Now, I'm going to do something I should have done a long time ago. Repeat after me: Anima Christi..." (fade out)

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