[Catholic Caucus] Diocese of Austin shuts down planned Latin Mass for students at Texas A&M University

Celebration of the Holy Mass vetus ordo, Mass in Latin, in the days of the pilgrimage Summorum Pontificum decennial.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (LifeSiteNews) — Catholic students at Texas A&M University in College Station will not have the opportunity to attend a planned Traditional Latin Mass after the Diocese of Austin ordered its cancellation.

A press release issued on September 24 by the student chapter of Juventutem International explains that an official from the Diocese of Austin, led by newly-installed Bishop Daniel Garcia, informed them they would not be allowed to bring in a priest from outside the diocese to offer the liturgy.

“The Mass was to be celebrated by a chaplain traveling from the Diocese of Victoria. On the evening before the liturgy, this priest was told by his Victoria bishop that he had received a directive from the Chancellor of the Diocese of Austin expressly forbidding him from traveling to College Station. This came after the pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Center, Fr. Will Straten, reported the Latin Mass to the Diocese of Austin,” the group said.

The Diocese of Victoria, Texas, was established in 1982. It is currently overseen by Bishop Brendan J. Cahill. Its chancellor is Msgr. Matthew Huehlefeld, J.C.L.

News of the cancelation is likely to increase the criticism currently being leveled against Garcia, who was named bishop of the Diocese of Austin on July 2, though he did not officially transfer to his new role until earlier this month.

Garcia made headlines last week when he announced in one of his final acts as bishop of Monterrey, California, that he would be shutting down the only Latin Mass available in the diocese in order to promote “unity” with Catholics who attend the Novus Ordo Mass. Garcia justified his efforts by citing Pope Francis’ 2021 document Traditionis Custodes, which greatly restricted the Latin Mass’ availability throughout the world.

“I invite you all to join in unity with the parish of Sacred Heart and St. Benedict, and in cooperation with your pastor, as they gather around the Table of the Lord celebrating the rich Eucharistic Sacrifice, each Sunday, which has been a great fruit of the Council,” Garcia said.

Juventutem International is a grassroots organization of young Catholics founded in 2004. It seeks to promote traditional liturgy, prayer, and community life. Sophomore Nick Cardone is the group’s president at Texas A&M. A convert to Catholicism, he did not mince words in his response to the diocese’s decision.

“At a time when so many young people are leaving the Church, and at the same time countless more are being attracted to the TLM, it is tragic that students who long for reverence and continuity with the past are being discriminated against. The Latin Mass is not a rebellion — it is the Mass of our ancestors, a treasure of the universal Church, and is currently the most productive source of vocations and conversions. To tyrannically restrict our right to it is to close the door on the very future of the Church, and on the impact it has on the world,” he said.

Cardone informed Catholic News Agency (CNA) that the group holds the Latin Mass once a month and that more than 100 A&M students attend the liturgy, which often takes place in students’ homes. Cardone also revealed that he repeatedly reached out to priests in College Station to offer the Mass but that former Bishop Joe Vasquez’s office informed them their requests couldn’t be fulfilled “because of Church law and a vague situation in the diocese.”

The Diocese of Austin issued a statement to CNA as well. Communications Director Camille Garcia said that Cardone’s group did not reach out to incoming Bishop Garcia for his approval, which she said is required for Masses held “outside of a sacred space on the university campus.”

Juventutum said in its press release that it is not discouraged over the news and that it will seek to resolve the matter with Garcia in the future.

‘The group remains fully committed to working with supportive clergy and students to restore reverent liturgy on campus and to defend the right of young Catholics to access the treasures of their own Church. We urge Bishop Daniel Garcia to reconsider this unjust decision and to allow the Traditional Latin Mass to flourish at Texas A&M, for the good of souls and the future of the Church.”

I'm a Catholic layperson, not a clergyman or theologian. Would like to explain the issue as I see it, a 66 y o male who was 4 in 1962 and remembers the time when every Mass was a Latin Mass. Vatican II was a huge convention of Cardinals and other Catholics, 1962-65, upsetting the Latin Mass and many other things in the Catholic Church. It is blamed, fairly, I think, for undermining the authority of the Church in peoples' lives, the sacredness and contemplative, prayerful, and divine nature of the Mass and other sacraments, and, that accomplished, generally, it facilitated corruption and decay in the Church.

The Mass for Catholics is the extremely formal and strictly worded embodiment of Jesus's commandment to "Do this in memory of Me" at the Last Supper. If you read the words of the Mass from beginning to end, you see that it really is a very dense memorial of many, many of the things that Jesus said and did while on Earth. It also embodies many of the undeniable predictive passages of the Old Testament that point out Jesus's arrival on Earth and His ministry. During the most important time of the Mass, called the Consecration or the Canon, is the time when the sacramental bread and wine, via transubstantiation become the actual Body and Blood of Jesus, therefore Divine, and it is really present in the church and then in communicants' bodies after they receive it.

The Latin Mass was and is formal, ornate, quiet, reverent, and allowed not a word of improvisation or deviation from the standard. It became standard sometime between 300 AD and 500 and was in its most formalized form, called the Tridentine Mass (after the city of Trent), in 1545 and years afterward, all the way up to 1962-5, when, suddenly, the Mass in English debuted in the US.

The tone of the Latin Mass was and is one of awesome reverence, but also very reassuring and engaging to Catholics in attendance. It is and feels more like active worship, rather than a regular prayer meeting of co-religionists.

Why was the Mass allowed to be said in the vernacular (English in the US obviously)? The reasons I recall hearing at the time were that the vernacular made people more engaged by hearing the words of the Mass in their own language. I suppose that might be true in some cases, but, the books (Missals) available at churches really made that reasoning specious. Plus, most people there knew the words of the Mass in Latin or English by rote and knew what they meant. It is fair to say that something is lost in the translation from Latin to vernacular because several revisions of a small nature were made post V2 to make the vernacular Mass 'closer' to the Latin.

But the main thing is that the Church since V2 has split into two factions, conservative (desiring, among other things, to attend Latin Mass as before); and liberal, preferring the Novus Ordo (English) Mass.

Up until Francis I the Popes either were indifferent or encouraging to revivals of the Latin Mass.

With Francis I and now, sadly Leo XIV, seem to want to suppress the preservation and revival of the Latin Mass. Because the time of V2 was also the time of tremendous relaxation of dress codes, liturgical standards, cheapening of sacred music, doctrines regarding the Eucharist, divorce and remarriage, being gay, etc., and relaxation of other aspects of Catholic habits, customs, and sacramentals (smaller sacramental practices of reverence).

Finally, my explanation of what happened. Now the liberals and possibly communists in the Church (lots of evidence of such infiltration over the years since 1930 into the clergy worldwide, who then became bishops and cardinals) hierarchy are apparently shifting from being slightly hostile to the Latin Mass, to now, cancelling previously planned Masses. Rude, inconsiderate, hostile to traditionalists, etc, are words that come to mind about this, and there is great concern that an outright ban of the Latin Mass might happen.

This is horrible because many of previously lapsed Catholics especially young ones, are discovering the Latin Mass and are finding it appealing and leading them to return in great numbers to Mass, reversing a massive and ghastly decline in practice that began pretty much in 1962-5, coinciding with V2 and all of its changes, some dubious and incorrect.

For example, documents pertaining to Ecumenism during V2 stated that (my paraphrasing) all the world's religions worship the same God and can attain eternal life; this can not be true based on the sacred literature of the other religions and fraternal organizations, whose dieties and personages are absolutely not divine and whose teachings are antithetical and contrary to Catholic teaching.

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[Catholic Caucus] Diocese of Austin shuts down planned Latin Mass for students at Texas A&M University

The president of A&M’s Juventutem student chapter said it is ‘tragic that students who long for reverence and continuity with the past are being discriminated against.’

Traditional Latin Mass Lacks Approval at Texas A&M University