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GAINESVILLE, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) – Parishioners of one of the Diocese of Arlington’s most vibrant Traditional Latin Mass communities looked shell-shocked and ashen, some fighting back tears, during the packed 12:30 Mass on Sunday.
Days before, Bishop Michael Burbidge announced that in just over a month, the Old Rite of the Mass – sometimes called the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the usus antiquior, the Traditional Latin Mass – will no longer be allowed at Holy Trinity.
Beginning September 8, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the 21 parishes in the diocese where the Old Mass is currently offered will shrink to just three – with five additional authorized locations, two of which are historic or former church buildings and three of which are schools.
READ: Diocese of Arlington announces sweeping new restrictions on Latin Mass
One of those schools is Renaissance Montessori School in Nokesville, which is technically within the parish boundaries of All Saints Catholic Church, but where Holy Trinity parishioners will go.
“The priests here at Holy Trinity love all of you,” pastor Father Thomas Vander Woude announced before the 12:30 Mass started. “Holy Trinity priests are going to take care of you. We’re the ones going over there [to Renaissance Montessori School]. So that’s what’s gonna happen. We’ll work on – as far as times of Masses, we’ll talk with you all … we’ll set it up beautifully.”
The three priests of Holy Trinity will be “taking care of you and all of your spiritual needs,” Vander Woude assured his parishioners, encouraging them to pray the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary beginning August 3 and ending September 8.
“I am becoming increasingly hopeful that by bearing this trial and cross, God will bring us some wonderful blessings,” Father Richard Carr told the faithful at the beginning of his homily. “Be sure that we will be bearing this cross with you, which lightens and sweetens it for us all.”
Holy Trinity is, like so many other parishes in the Diocese of Arlington, a place where both attendees of the new (Novus Ordo) and old rites of the Mass get along well and are together active in the life of the parish, which boasts a large homeschooling community and is where Bishop Athanasius Schneider offered a Solemn Pontifical Mass in October 2021.
There is a 24-hour Adoration chapel. There are crates in the narthex where parishioners drop off nonperishable food for the needy. There is a plaque inscribed with 1 Corinthians 15:51 (“We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed”) above the diaper changing pad in the women’s restroom, near posters offering help after abortion and miscarriage. The 12:30 Latin Mass is bursting with large, young families who benefit from the church’s two cry rooms.
All are welcome, truly.
The news that the Old Mass will no longer be allowed in the parish church “was really shocking,” Tom Mead told LifeSiteNews after the 12:30 Latin Mass. “We didn’t think it was gonna happen here.”
“We got to hear from our priests today and I think they’ve got the right attitude,” Mead said. “We’re gonna make the best of a terrible situation and one day, hopefully, we’ll be back in our church where we belong.”
“But,” he continued, “God gave us this cross. He permitted us to have this cross. Who am I to tell God, ‘no, I’m not gonna take this cross?’ We’ll make the best of this situation and we’ll pray and we’ll continue to worship God and have the celebration of the Traditional Mass. We’ll pray for our bishops and support our priests, who are just unbelievable in this diocese – just so many holy men. In God’s time, it’ll be fixed.”
‘More unity with both rites being here in the parish instead of kicking one out’
Parishioner Megan Gray, who is pregnant with her eighth child, told LifeSiteNews she felt “pretty much sadness and disappointment and a little bit of anger, because it just seems like it’s very unnecessary to move us to the gym when there’s no problem.”
“The bishop says it’s for unity, but there’s more unity with both rites being here in the parish instead of kicking one out,” said Gray, who is an alumna of Christendom College.
“This announcement this morning was like a knife going through my heart,” Doug Koupash said. “I [worshipped at] the Latin Mass until I went to college. That’s when the Novus Ordo was in full bloom. And I remember the first time I went to the local church at my university in Iowa and they had the English and the guitars and the banjos … I was absolutely horrified. I was horrified. I left that church and did not go back.”
“So on and off I went to the church. I got married and went back to the Church again. I tried with the Novus Ordo Mass and there was nothing there. After a while, there was nothing in my heart. I couldn’t do it anymore. And I can’t go back to that. So I have some decisions to make.”
“When I was very troubled,” he said, greatly struggling to speak through tears, “I looked at the Eastern Mass, the Eastern Church. And I always thought that if I couldn’t find spirituality here, I would go there. I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’m sorry.”
Holy Trinity is “one of the strongest parishes, I think, in the diocese,” an individual who only gave his first name, Chris, told LifeSiteNews, adding that parishioners eagerly donated to the parish maintenance fund to quickly pay off the church mortgage. “Why not just keep having [the Latin Mass] here, where the church was built for it? Instead, it’s down at [a] Montessori school” where “there’s not even a chapel. It’s a preschool.”
“It seems like it’s a special indignity,” he added. “It’s like moving us to a stall, or a stable.”
Christy Dodge, a mother of five whose sons are altar servers at Holy Trinity, echoed the sadness expressed by other parishioners.
“Part of the attraction of the Mass is the beauty and of course the Mass itself is really beautiful. But the gym is not gonna be very beautiful. And it’s also gonna be really small and have no cry room,” she said. “But of course – I’ve heard that he [Burbidge] asked for more parishes to keep it and he was told not to … I’ve heard he tried and he’s also trying to obey the Pope. So we’re just really praying hard for the Pope to reverse this or for it to be reversed somehow. It’s really difficult for everybody.”
“I believe that the Extraordinary Form is filling,” parishioner Jeremy Kelly, a convert from Protestantism, commented. “We’re getting a lot of people that are coming back to the Traditional Mass because it is our inheritance. And it disappeared for a long time. It’s weird. It’s like, we were given this inheritance that we really didn’t grow up with. And so now we find the beauty and we find the tradition and we come back and we accept that this is the Mass of the saints. And yet, it’s being denied [to us] slowly.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me that they would put [this Mass] in a school, when it’s already being said here and it’s already filling the seats.”