Bishop Michael Martin’s recently leaked draft document “Go in Peace Glorifying the Lord by Your Life” is probably the pettiest, nastiest, most malicious episcopal letter I have ever read. The level of micromanaging displayed in this 7,700 word screed beggars belief. The letter—which runs twenty printed pages—sets a new bar for pedantry with its obsessive attempts to regulate every minute aspect of the liturgy in the Diocese of Charlotte, right down to what prayers a priest says privately while vesting alone in the sacristy. It is a stunning display of small-mindedness by a prelate of exceptional hubris, who announces that he is going to “set his own preferences aside” before he ruthlessly imposes them on his clergy, who lauds “the rich tradition that has been handed down to us” before systematically destroying it with the zeal of a Jacobin, who claims to “encourage unity in worship” while proposing liturgical norms guaranteed to plunge his diocese into chaos. Its dissonance reaches Orwellian levels of double speak.
The micromanagement evidenced by Bishop Martin is astonishing. I’ve read a lot of liturgical documents in my life, and most of them concern themselves with general norms and guidelines, admit of some exceptions, and then ask the celebrants to proceed with prudence and discernment. Martin’s document, on the other hand, drills down into the absolute minutiae of a parish’s liturgical life, legislating on such trivialities as how a priest prays privately while he is vesting, how much lace an alb is allowed to have, how tall a missal stand can be, where candles can be placed, and so on. The excessive focus on these particulars do not paint Martin as a man concerned with the pastoral needs of his people; if anything, they make him look compulsive to the point of neurosis.
Two of Martin’s particular neuroses are “full, conscious, and active participation” (which becomes the justification for everything in this draconian document), and a bizarre obsession with the faithful having to see the altar at all times. Not just see the altar, but having such a fully clear and comprehensive view of it that altar decor must necessarily be minimalist. No candles, except off to the sides. No flowers. Martin even prohibits the priest from using a missal stand on the premise that missal stands obstruct the view of the faithful (he allows an exception only for priests with visual impairments, and even then the missal stand must be “low profile”). Martin’s method of obsessively interpreting the Church’s entire liturgical praxis through these principles is indicative of an unbalanced view of Catholic worship.
Martin’s hermemeutic also shows that Trads are not exaggerating when we say that progressives act like the Church started in 1965: Martin literally asserts that every custom must be mandated in a post-Conciliar document to have any validity. For Martin, Vatican II truly is a terminus ante quem non before which nothing else matters, and a zero point from which every licit Catholic practice must proceed. For all intents and purposes, the Church started in 1965.
3. Continuity Means Nothing; Tradition is an Abstraction
4. Same Old Vatican II Shenanigans
Martin’s use of the documents of Vatican II to justify his insane liturgical vision is likewise deficient. Of course, we have come to expect this from progressives, repeating tired old canards like “Vatican II asked us to get rid of Latin,” or “Vatican II says Mass must be said facing the people.” Bishop Martin’s letter is brimming with such nonsense. Matt Gaspers has done an excellent fact check of all Martin’s misleading statements, if you want to see a break down of how this wily bishop distorts the facts.
5. The Hand of the Evil One
Finally—and I swear I don’t say this lightly—some of these directives seem downright Satanic. I am referring specifically to Martin’s prohibition on the faithful saying the St. Michael Prayer at the end of Mass, as well as his prohibition of altar servers kneeling in front of the altar during the consecration of the Eucharist. I don’t know the state of Bishop Martin’s soul and I don’t presume to judge these matters, but looking at these sorts of directives, I can’t see how anyone acting in the spirit of piety to Our Lord—who takes the spiritual life seriously and believes in the existence of the spiritual world—could mandate such things.
Conclusion: A Paralyzing, Sterile Liturgy
Ultimately, it seems Bishop Michael Martin has mistaken the sacred liturgy for his personal Pinterest board, curating a sterile, minimalist aesthetic that would make even the most ardent Puritan blush. With the zeal of a bureaucrat armed with a ruler and a vendetta, he’s sculpted a 7,700-word monument to his own hubris, where tradition is praised in one breath and guillotined in the next. This Orwellian document reads less like a pastoral letter and more like a dystopian style guide, where missal stands are contraband, altar rails are relics of a forbidden past, and private prayers are subject to episcopal veto. One wonders if the good bishop will next decree the acceptable length of a priest’s shoelaces or the precise angle of a bowed head! In his quest for “full, conscious, and active participation,” Martin has crafted a liturgy so obsessively controlled it risks paralyzing the very souls it claims to uplift. If this is unity, it’s the unity of a spreadsheet—cold, calculated, and utterly devoid of the warmth of the Church’s living tradition. Perhaps the faithful of Charlotte can take solace in one thing: when the altar is stripped bare and the St. Michael Prayer is silenced, they’ll have an unobstructed view of the chaos that follows.
