(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Robert McClory recently announced that a Catholic church in the Diocese of Gary, Indiana, will close next year due to dwindling parish life after he ousted the Latin Mass over two years ago.
St. Joseph, a stunningly beautiful church in Hammond, Indiana, a hair’s breadth across the border of Illinois and the greater Chicago area, is slated for closure along with other churches in the area. A May 11 letter from McClory cited a “multi-year” drop in Mass attendance, parish registrations and ministry, and sacramental participation.
A number of commentators are faulting the suppression of the traditional Latin Mass, which was offered at the church by the Institute of Christ the King (ICKSP) under then-Bishop Donald Hying. As the liturgist Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has noted, photos show a considerable number of faithful were attending these Masses on weekdays as well as Sundays.
However, a hit piece published by the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) in 2019 and the animosity of Novus Ordo attendees highlighted by the article led Bishop Hying to limit ICKSP Latin Masses to Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.
In fact, parishioners had lodged a petition with over 100 signatures in order to drive the ICKSP from St. Joseph. This was apparently largely due to the parishioners’ distaste for the orthodoxy of the Latin Mass community that they saw as “radical.”
“The more we learn about the ICK, the more we have come to understand what they represent, namely, radical traditionalism, clericalism, sexism, sectarianism, triumphalism, rejection of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the seamless garment of Catholic social teaching,” Joan Crist, a parishioner and professor of theology at Calumet College of St. Joseph, wrote in an email to NCR.
According to NCR, the parishioners took issue with ICKSP’s use of only male altar servers in traditional Masses, and Crist said the final straw was when she discovered the Good Friday prayers for the conversion of the Jews still used in Latin Masses.
“I called my Jewish interfaith dialogue partners to apologize for what is happening in my own parish,” she said, going so far as to compare the ICKSP to “a cancer quietly spreading around the Midwest.”
After Pope Francis issued his Latin Mass-suppressing motu propio Traditionis Custodes, McClory moved the Latin Mass to Our Lady of Czestochowa Shrine in Merrillville as of January 1, 2023. The move was in accordance with Traditionis Custodes’ stipulation that TLMs not be held in parish churches.
“Meanwhile, its one source of vitality plucked out, St. Joe’s continued to struggle, as it reduced its weekend schedule to just one Sunday Mass,” Kwasniewski observed.
Latin Mass communities across the country are often full to the brim or overflowing with families, in stark contrast to the standard Novus Ordo Mass, which is frequently attended disproportionately by seniors and/or few families.
These attendees often speak of the traditional Latin Mass with passionate enthusiasm, describing it as reflective of the transcendence of God, a quality not nearly as often attributed to the Novus Ordo Missae.
