Stories of Motor City Traditionalism

Thanks be to God, I was able to attend the Easter Vigil according to the Traditional Latin Mass last night.  It was a bittersweet experience, as it will be my last in the state of Michigan. Next month I'm moving to Ohio, or at least the Michigan suburb that is Toledo.  As I sat during the (very long!) chanting of the lessons, my mind drifts, as it does even when it is proclaimed in English. 21 years ago I had been in this position, albeit in dramatically different circumstances.

In 2001, there was no "approved" Triduum services in the Archdiocese of Detroit so far as I can remember.  If you wanted that experience, you had to drive an hour north to Flint, something I eagerly did. I was a 19 year old traditionalist, only recently finding the Latin Mass.  I experienced the Triduum services the only way one could in our diocese at the time: illegally at the small SSPX chapel. I didn't have any opinions on the doctrinal controversies, I just wanted to experience what the Triduum was like.

In 2022, a year after Francis made it his intention to eventually ban the Latin Mass, four months after the head of the CDW hinted at his intent to suppress Triduum services in the TLM, I know of at least 5 different Churches in the greater metro area that had at least one of the Triduum services, and that's not counting the SSPX, who are now in a far larger parish in a far better neighborhood.  All of these likely had at least 100 individuals, two of them likely 200+.  Traditionis Custodes and subsequent legislation have made life as a trad difficult in some areas.  In Detroit, nothing has changed, and that's a story worth talking about.

I want to make clear this is a story about Traditionalism in the Motor City, not the story.  I'm in no position to give the authoritative story.  I'm not sure anyone is for reasons that will become clear.  So this it the Kevin Tierney version.  This version has the advantage of being involved in this scene since 2001 and having conversations on both the side of the individuals intimately involved with its explosive growth, and some of those on the diocesan side.  It also has the benefit of a bit of distance.  I wasn't some leader of trads here, but I am one of the individuals most "leaders" know or have spoken with.  I didn't build things here, but I gave a few bricks.

While the story of the Latin Mass in the Metro Detroit predates Summorum Pontificum (whether it be the SSPX in Redford, or All Saints in Flint), it is with Summorum Pontificum that I have my first story about traditionalism here I think is worth telling.  (I have many stories of the Indult days, but none germane to the story I want to tell here.)  On Holy Thursday, I had a long gap between the time I finished lunch with a friend, and the time Mass started.  Rather than drive 30 minutes home to the suburbs, I stayed downtown and just went to pray in the empty Church.  During that prayer, a woman came up to me, informing me that several things needed to be done to help prepare for the liturgy, and someone was needed for the canopy.  "Do you mind?"  It was a statement she is sorry if that inconvenienced me, but I was going to help her.  During the time of setting up (this was about 2 hours before Mass), she got my story and why I was there, and I got the chance to quiz her about what her views were for organizing the Latin Mass there.  It was during this time I learned she had an intense disdain for the chattering class of traditionalism (not knowing at the time I was a blogger with a respectable audience) for all their talk on what needs to be done differently, rather than actually doing something.  She and her husband (a traditionalist who has far outgrown his importance to just Detroit) did all this work helping parishes flourish, while "those people" just whined and complained and a few other words I won't write in a family friendly organization.

The traditionalist scene has its intellectuals here.  Yet it is far more interested in lay faithful doing their part to make it work.  Contrary to the assumptions of many in Rome, the Latin Mass in Detroit is not the plaything of priests:  it is something demanded by the laity.  Several groups have sprung up to help support the laity in getting access to what they want.  I think of organizations like the local chapter of Juventutum (disclosure:  I used to pay dues even if you could never really call me a "member"), which would go to a parish in the suburbs without a traditionalist audience, and ask the priest if he'd be okay with allowing a Latin Mass there, giving everyone a chance to see that people in their community would show up if it was offered.  The head of that chapter had the crazy idea of just walking into a parish and asking.  It worked!

This brings me to a second story about Traditionalism in the Motor City.  In the days right after Summorum Pontificum, where I went on a tour of the Archdiocesan office with a Catholic author and his friends within the diocesan bureaucracy.  (You haven't lived until you see Papal Action Figures Wrestling in the headquarters of an archdiocese.)  Several of these individuals were involved in securing the Indult in Detroit, and favored Summorum Pontificum.  Yet they spoke with alarm at the trend of new parishes being approached asking them to celebrate Latin Masses.  Their idea was to keep things neat and controlled, wanting traditionalists to be filtered into one or two parishes.  This served two purposes:  it provided a powerful image of everyone crowding into one (or two) parishes, but it also allowed people to keep better tabs on what was happening.  We had to watch out for the "rad trads" my author friend told me.

Anyone who knows anything about the Latin Mass in Detroit knows that the exact opposite approach was taken instead.  The laity got several parishes to allow the Latin Mass with varying frequency, and from those small communities they were nourished into thriving communities over time.  Now there are 6-7 Latin Mass communities, all over 100 parishioners in the Metro Detroit area.  This decentralized nature makes it pretty hard to control, so the Archdiocese did the next best thing:  it tried to support it and nurture it. Has it been perfect?  Of course not. Has it meant trads never criticize the diocese?  When they deserve it, they get it.  Yet for the most part, its criticism done within the reservation.  The decentralized nature of things makes this arrangement possible.  I also think it is why Traditionis Custodes didn't touch anything here.  Trying to limit all activity within one or two parishes for an entire archdiocese works when there are only a few parishes.  When you have 6-7 different weekly masses, and 10-15 of lesser frequency a month across a 70 mile radius?  You're ripping people from their communities, tearing them from the pastoral bonds they've formed.  To suppress the Latin Mass within the Detroit area would require the coordination, alignment and cooperation of at least 4 bishops (in two different countries), intending to suppress the Latin Mass.  It is doubtful those Bishops would have been inclined to act, but I'm sure those logistical difficulties in such a suppression would make even the most committed of ideologues choose coexistence.

I'm sure there are those in the diocese who can offer you a better story with juicier details.  They might be more willing to cover some of the controversial stories, a few which even include this author!  In the end, I don't think they offer any meaningful insight as to how the Latin Mass communities of Detroit have flourished in the past two decades, and will almost certainly continue to flourish.