Sources: Charlotte bishop shelves Mass manifesto, for now

After TLM pushback, liturgical controversy continues in North Carolina

The Bishop of Charlotte, North Carolina is expected to release new policies governing the ordinary celebration of the Mass in his diocese, local sources say, but a recently leaked draft policy text has already been spiked internally in the diocese, after widespread pushback against the bishop’s plans.

The leaked text follows widespread controversy last week over new restrictions on older liturgical forms in the Charlotte diocese.

Bishop Michael Martin, OFM Conv. Credit: Diocese of Charlotte.

And while Charlotte Bishop Michael Martin has urged Catholics to pray for an end to division in the diocese, some clerics and laity in the diocese say the recent liturgical restrictions are part of a broader pattern of divisive leadership that has emerged during the bishop’s year-long tenure in Charlotte.

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On Friday, May 23, Martin announced a policy in the diocese aimed at “completing the implementation of Traditionis custodes” by prohibiting the Mass celebrated using a 1962 liturgical missal — sometimes called the usus antiquior or Traditional Latin Mass — from four parish churches in the diocese where it has been celebrated since 2021.

Martin instead designated a soon-to-be-established chapel in Mooresville, North Carolina, as the singular locus for the usus antiquior in western North Carolina.

While the bishop said the diocese would renovate the chapel and provide a priest for Sunday Masses, the plan drew protests from Catholics who said the move was premature and unnecessary, because the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship had given permission for parish churches in Charlotte to continue offering Mass in the older form until October, and because the dicastery had given extensions to parishes in other dioceses.

Further, some Catholics said the move would cause hardship to families with devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass, creating long drives to the Mooresville chapel each Sunday.

But amid pushback, the Charlotte diocese has held firm in recent days, insisting that Martin was following the intention of Pope Francis’ 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes, and that it is the intention of the Church to see less attendance at Traditional Latin Masses, despite their reportedly growing popularity among many younger Catholics in the U.S. and other Western countries.

In a set of talking points issued over the weekend, the diocese explained that Pope Francis believed “that allowing a more widespread celebration of the TLM was causing more division universally in the Church.”

“While it is sad that some may leave the Church, it appears that the direction … Pope Francis required was implemented to cause less division over the longer term.”

“The purpose of the new norms is clearly to limit access to the TLM,” the diocese wrote.

Before the May 23 decision was announced, four parish priests in the Charlotte diocese — those “entrusted with the pastoral care of those attending the Traditional Latin Mass” in the diocese — wrote to Martin, urging him to reconsider his decision.

“It is important to acknowledge that those attached to the traditional liturgy have, over the past five decades, often felt marginalized and discriminated against. Consequently, their trust in Church leadership has, understandably, been weakened over time. A significant aspect of our ministry involves reconciliation and accompaniment for those who have felt unwelcome. We fear a reversal in policy will negatively impact the good will built up over time.”

The priests asked Martin to request an extension from the Vatican for parish Masses, and to allow more than one designated site for the older liturgy in the diocese.

“We respectfully question any perceived need to interpret the document in the strictest possible manner or exceed its written requirements,” they wrote. “We further request that you become more acquainted with our Latin Mass communities, to better understand their desires, challenges, and pastoral needs.”

Martin did not acquiesce to that request, issuing restrictions on May 23, and explaining in talking points that Catholics aggrieved by the decision should “engage in some acts of penance and charity for the healing of the Church,” and that Catholics in the diocese should “call on the Holy Spirit to purge our hearts of division and the anger it foments.”

Martin’s decision has been met with widespread criticism in the Charlotte diocese, reportedly because several extraordinary form communities are integrated into local parishes, creating, according to some sources, a sense of solidarity between those who attend the older liturgies, and Catholics attending other Masses.

While that controversy continues, several sources close to the chancery have told The Pillar that Martin will soon release a limited policy document addressing other liturgical practices in the Charlotte diocese, especially the use of altar rails or prie-dieus for Catholics who kneel for the reception of Holy Communion.

Because the U.S. bishops established in 2001 that “the norm for reception of Holy Communion in the dioceses of the United States is standing,” the Charlotte text is expected to encourage catechesis on that front, which some say will discourage kneeling to receive the Eucharist.

Defenders say that such catechesis is in line with the Church’s General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which in its 2003 edition urged that Catholics who choose to kneel should not be denied the Eucharist, but should be “provid[ed] with proper catechesis on the reasons for this norm.”

Critics say that kneeling to receive the Eucharist has gained popularity in recent years, and should be recognized as an increasingly customary practice among younger Catholics — and that the advice for catechesis on standing for the Eucharist was dropped in 2010 revision to the U.S. edition of the GIRM.

Several sources close to the diocesan chancery confirmed that Martin had originally contemplated a far broader swath of liturgical restrictions related to the ordinary form of the Mass, among them a prohibition on Roman style vestments, altar crucifixes and candles (in favor of those used in the processional and placed next to the altar), the use of the Latin language, and the recitation of vesting prayers, customarily recited by priests as they don the vestments used for Mass.

A draft text detailing those plans was published Wednesday by the traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli; The Pillar has confirmed the authenticity of that draft text.

But when those plans were raised this spring at meetings of both the diocesan presbyteral council and an ad hoc liturgical working group established by Martin, they were met with strong opposition from each group, sources close to the process told The Pillar.

“The presbyteral council panned it because so much of it goes against the [General Instruction of the Roman Missal]. And the bishop’s working group did, too,” one source in the diocese told The Pillar.

“The bishop didn’t want to roll out the whole policy without any support of the presbyteral council,” another source explained. “He felt differently about the TLM because he had the support of Traditionis. But the Novus Ordo plans got panned by everybody who talked about them, across the entire theological spectrum of the presbyterate.”

One source told The Pillar that Benedictine Abbot Placid Solari, of North Carolina’s Belmont Abbey — a member of the presbyteral council — was particularly instrumental in urging Martin to restrict his policy proposals to the limitations of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal.

Meanwhile, while seeming to shelf his broader plans, Martin has reportedly told priests that he plans soon to issue a prohibition against using altar rails for the distribution of Holy Communion — “that’s his big thing, he’s really focused on that,” one source said.

But sources in the diocese think that Martin might eventually publish more elements of the policy draft in a “piecemeal” fashion and over time.

“And he already requires this stuff when he goes somewhere [in the diocese] for Mass,” a source explained.

Martin has not yet responded to questions from The Pillar.

The recent flare up over liturgy is part of a larger pattern of problems in the diocese since Martin arrived last May, several sources have said.

The bishop, a Conventual Franciscan, was installed in Charlotte in May 2024, reportedly with enthusiastic support from Atlanta’s Archbishop Gregory Hartmayer — also a Conventual Franciscan friar — who is the metropolitan archbishop in the province which includes the Charlotte diocese.

Martin, 63, spent most of his priestly life in high school education and campus ministry, until in 2022 Hartmayer appointed him pastor of an Atlanta archdiocese parish.

Soon after that appointment, Charlotte’s Bishop Peter Jugis asked the Vatican to allow him early retirement — because of a debilitating chronic kidney condition — and Martin was appointed to lead the Charlotte diocese.

In both Atlanta and Charlotte, some Catholics have speculated that Hartmayer, likely aware of Jugis’ health condition, appointed Martin a pastor in order to bolster the prospect of his eventual appointment as Jugis’ successor.

But however he got there, Martin’s tenure in Charlotte has been marked by some controversy.

Sources in the diocese told The Pillar that an anonymous open letter to Martin — circulated in the diocese in January 2025 — had support from much of the diocesan presbyterate when it was published, as it flagged several alleged issues with Martin’s leadership.

Among the issues noted in the letter were “arbitrary micromanagement,” “the speed of change and lack of pastoral sensitivity,” “failure to consider the effects of decisions”, and insufficient “synodality” in the diocese, which amounted to an “autocratic approach.”

The letter urged Martin to “please consider freezing any major changes for at least two years, allowing time to establish relationships across the diocese, listen, in fulfillment of your word, and provide yourself time to understand the unique needs of this diocese. This pause would demonstrate a true willingness to understand your flock prior to navigating the ship in a new course.”

While sources acknowledged that anonymous open letters in the Church’s life are usually dismissed easily, one source in the diocese explained that “this was unusually well-sourced and informed, respectful, but explained the issues in our diocese really well, which is why it resonated so much with priests across the theological spectrum.”

Some sources pointed to a Catholic Leadership Institute study conducted earlier this year in the Charlotte diocese, which flagged Martin’s “speed of change” and "building trust” as areas in need of improvement in the diocese. While the full study has not been released publicly, it reportedly included complaints of an authoritarian style of leadership, at odds with the synodality promoted by Pope Francis.

“He presumes the trust of the priests, but didn’t gain it,” one source said. “That’s why — even with assignments — they just don’t trust that he has their best interests at heart.”

The diocesan talking point memo offered a different perspective.

“Listening and agreeing aren’t the same thing,” the text explained. “Bishop Martin cares deeply for everyone in western North Carolina as is the mandate of every shepherd of the Church.”

Editor’s note: This story is developing and has been updated.