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At a Catholic funeral Mass for the father of a good friend, I watched as the priest in a white alb paced the sanctuary for at least an hour prior to the ceremonies, his half-detached Roman collar swinging like a broken door jam around his neck as he attended to the details of the service.

When the time came to put on his vestment, he pulled the polyester liturgical poncho over his head in front of the congregation as if he was putting on a sweat shirt in Planet Fitness.

The priest’s behavior was fairly typical of many Novus Ordo clergy: Low on ceremony, high on ultra casual. His attitude could be summed up this way: Let’s-get-this-ceremony-over-with-because-I’ve-got-things-to-do. In many ways it seems priests like this are weary of the priesthood. (Let me add that in my twelve plus years as an Orthodox Christian I’ve never seen an Orthodox priest vest this way; Orthodoxy proscribes a very formal and prayerful manner of vesting.)

This is a small example of what has happened in much of mainstream Catholicism, but when a million small examples crowd the amphitheater of liturgical practice, what you get in the end is a totally new script.

As Pope Benedict XVI once observed, “The Church stands or falls with the liturgy.” Truer words have never been spoken but far too many Catholic bishops and priests still don’t get it.

They wonder and agonize over Pew polls reporting that 69% of Catholics believe the bread and wine at Mass are only symbols while a mere 39% of Catholics believe the Church’s teaching on Transubstantiation.

They have no idea why only 20 to 25% of Catholics identify as practicing Catholics (this survey was taken in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia). Like clueless detectives, they form study groups to find out how to bring people back to Church while turning a blind eye to how the Church may have caused the problem.

When you have lay people distributing communion; when you have communion hosts being handed out like tokens in a casino (communion in hand); when you have Masses in which there’s no ringing of bells at the consecration or when the priest refuses to raise the host and chalice high in the air but keeps it low and casual in the manner of that funeral priest’s detached collar; when you have show-off cantors who raise their arms and perform all sorts of narcissistic theatrics as if performing on ‘America’s Got Talent’; and when you have a Church that has basically forgotten its rich tradition of Gregorian chant and replaced it with tacky sentimentalism of songs like ‘On Eagles Wings,’ what you get is a pedestrian service with no zero sacred appeal.

Recently the situation got even worse.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, Bishop Michael T. Martin, OFM, appointed by Pope Francis in 2024, has declared that the traditional Mass in the Extraordinary Form will no longer be allowed in parish churches in the Diocese of Charlotte.

Now, Charlotte happens to have a large TLM community, one of the largest and most vibrant in the nation. Pope Francis – who hated the Latin Mass, the English language and the entire Anglophile world – must have known this when he appointed Martin to carry out his iconoclastic revolution.

Martin, in his pursuit of a more Protestant-style Catholicism, has decreed that as of October 2, 2025, the Latin Mass community of Charlotte be relegated to an obscure, out-of-the-way chapel, a former Protestant church called the “Freedom Christian Center,” located a good 45 minutes outside the city.

Martin’s selection of this Church is telling in other ways: it shows his hatred of traditional Catholic Church architecture, for not only is he punishing traditional Catholics in his diocese by isolating the Latin Mass to a tiny chapel in the sticks, in effect he doubled down when he chose this chapel for the TLM community because it will have no high altar but will in fact will be outfitted in an extreme minimalist way: IKEA table altar, bare walls with minimal to zero sacred decoration; in other words a Catholic Church that doesn’t look Catholic at all.

Reaction to Martin’s decree has been swift and explosive.

“This is a particularly painful enforcement because the diocese of Charlotte had several thriving communities built around the TLM, ‘the National Review observed. “Charlotte is a fast growing diocese as more and more Catholics move to the American South.”

Martin, who likes to make banal statements about “talking and listening to everyone like Jesus did,” went further in his liturgical war against tradition in the Charlotte Diocese.

Here are Martin’s new orders regarding the Novus Ordo Mass:

1. Novus Ordo Masses must never use Latin.
2. There shall be no kneeling for communion.
3. Altar rails are banned in the construction of new churches.
4. Communion on the tongue is outlawed.
5. Classical vestments are banned.
6. Altar crucifixes and altar candles are banned.

Martin’s heretical agenda generated outrage among conservative and even centrist-liberal Catholic podcasters.

Petitions were organized by Charlotte’s traditional priests and Catholics. Reaction intensified when Martin made it known that the reforms he was proposing were essential for the unity of the Church. This unity-a false equivalency since his actions in effect alienate a good portion of Catholics in his diocese-was so important he said he didn’t care if Catholics stopped attending church or stopped contributing funds to the Charlotte Diocese.

Let them go elsewhere, is his attitude; which, of course is what has been happening over the last several decades. Many sincere Catholics, fed up with the liturgical wars and the assault of modernism, have either stopped going to Mass altogether or have gone over to Eastern Orthodoxy, where it’s unlikely you’ll find a bishop like Martin who wants to rewrite the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom or declare war on the veneration of icons.

Everything Bishop Martin advocates was fairly typical of 1970s Catholicism, the worst decade for the celebration of the liturgy in the Church’s history, and the worst decade for Catholic Church architecture.

This was a time when sacred imagery in churches was replaced by felt and burlap banners, altars in the round and priests who encouraged guitar and jazz Masses.

As one parishioner from the Charlotte Diocese wrote:

“When giving communion, he stands in front of the altar rails, if the church has them, and refuses to let parishioners kneel inside their church that they are paying to participate in. He has placed his zuchetto (Bishop’s hat) on a female and several male students as if it is a party hat….. The Diocese of Charlotte was flourishing and this guy is running it into the ground… We don’t trust him.”

It’s no longer enough for conservative Catholics to be passive and silent and take out their frustrations in prayer and petitions, hoping that Bishop Martin will change. Bishops like Martin very often don’t respond to prayer and Hallmark card politeness.

Only a harsh and decisive censure from Rome will do the job.

If this doesn’t happen, one thing will be made clear: The Roman Church is really no longer Catholic.