The history of the current traditional Catholic movement in the Charlotte area dates back to the 1960s.  Faithful Catholics of that era exhausted every attempt to obtain help from their Bishop to simply exercise their rights to worship in accord with the traditional Roman Rite.  That history can be found here.

In February 1985, after Pope John Paul II’s 1984 indult granted Bishops permission to allow priests to offer the Latin Mass, the parish of St. Leo the Great in Winston-Salem hosted a one time diocesan supported Latin Mass.  The even earlier predecessor to the CLMC, the Society of Traditional Roman Catholics (STRC) wrote an article about the event which you can view here.

While previous appeals to previous Bishops where unfruitful, with the appointment of Bishop Peter Jugis in 2003 and the introduction of the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum in 2007, a new community of faithful formed to begin a renewed effort to advocate for our spiritual needs.

Giving the faithful a new hope, In December 2007, Bishop Jugis stated in an interview in the diocesan newspaper, “Both forms of the Mass are legitimate means of worship; we don’t want to hurt or leave people behind because of their devotion to earlier liturgical forms.”

“Both forms of the Mass are legitimate means of worship; we don’t want to hurt or leave people behind because of their devotion to earlier liturgical forms.”  – His Excellency Peter Jugis, Bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte

In December 2007, Bishop Jugis even authorized a 5-day training session for 14-priests to be trained in the rubrics of the 1962 missal.

2007 Catholic News and Herald Article about Summorum Pontificum

Notwithstanding all of the hopeful training and statements from the Diocese of Charlotte, even four years later, very little had changed.   One diocesan parish in Charlotte offered a Wednesday evening Latin Mass along with a once a month anticipated Mass on Saturday night.  When the laity would beg priests for more, they would be asked to pray for patience with no commitments.

In 2011, frustrated with Bishops ignoring Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI issued the Apostolic Letter Universae Ecclesia.  This new document gave traditionalist lay associations a more defined legal formula in Canon Law for making requests and receiving hierarchical recourse.   Armed with this new juridical mechanism, the Catholic faithful organized under the name, Coetus Fidelium (Latin for “Stable Group of Faithful”).

“Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows. There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal. … What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.”
— Pope Benedict XVI, Accompanying Letter to the Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum.

For this initial petition requesting regular scheduled Latin Masses on Sundays and Feast Days, the signatures of 50 families (representing 202 souls) were gathered over a period of only three days.  In a letter dated August 15, 2011, the Feast of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (and the 56th anniversary of the founding of the parish), the letter was addressed to Fr. Timothy Reid, the Pastor of St. Ann Catholic Church in Charlotte, and was accompanied by a spiritual bouquet of 4,671 rosaries.

Summorum Pontificum Art. 5, §1:  “In parishes where a group of the faithful attached to the previous liturgical tradition stably exists, the parish priest should willingly accede to their requests to celebrate Holy Mass according to the rite of the 1962 Roman Missal.”

Notwithstanding the expressed wishes of the Holy Father, this August 15, 2011 petition was rejected by Father Timothy Reid.

Summorum Pontificum Art. 7.:  “If a group of the lay faithful, as mentioned in Art. 5, §1, has not been granted its requests by the parish priest, it should inform the diocesan bishop.” 

Continuing to follow the formula of Summorum Pontificum, the group of laity, now representing 54 families and 220 souls, sent this petition to His Excellency Bishop Peter Jugis on November 1, 2011, the Feast of All Saints, accompanied by a new spiritual bouquet of 4,716 rosaries.

Summorum Pontificum Art. 7.:  “The bishop is earnestly requested to satisfy their desire.”

Notwithstanding the expressed wishes of the Holy Father, this November 1, 2011 petition was rejected by Bishop Peter Jugis.

Summorum Pontificum Art. 7.:  “If [the bishop] does not wish to provide for such celebration, the matter should be referred to the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei (PCED).”

In keeping with the formula outlined by Summorum Pontificum (Art. 7), our Coetus Fidelium referred the matter to the Roman authorities at the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei (PCED).  In a letter dated, March 16, 2012, stating that our families had suffered a gravamen or harm deriving from the denial of a subjective right protected by the law of the Catholic Church, our group requested an equitable remedy to our petition.

We received our reply from the Ecclesia Dei Commission in the form of a letter dated, May 24, 2012 [Letter Attached Here: May 2012 Letter From PCED].  They informed us that they had received our letter and that the Pontifical Commission was making the necessary enquiries (Prot. N. 26/2011).

Nine months later, on Sunday, February 10, 2013, we were notified by a letter published in the bulletin and read from the pulpit at St. Ann Catholic Church in Charlotte, that in response to our petition to Rome, the 12:30 pm Spanish Novus Ordo Mass would be converted to a regular Sunday Latin Mass [News Article Here].

In a sad twist of providence, the following day, February 11, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI announced the abdication of his throne.  While this sad news came hard to all, the goal of our petition was achieved without a day to spare.

On June 11, 2013 our group, Coetus Fidelium reorganized into a new organization named the Charlotte Latin Mass Community, Inc., incorporated as a new legal entity with the North Carolina Secretary of State as a Non-Profit Corporation (SOSID: #132258).

Over the years, in addition to our advocacy, our Community has organized events and supported the material needs of priests.  Below is a partial list:

• Funded the purchase of four full Solemn Mass vestments sets (~$40,000).
• Sponsored funding for priests to attend a Latin Mass training in Chicago.
• Sponsored missions, lectures, and conferences, including: Most Rev. John Berg, Superior General, FSSP; Fr. Shannon Collins, MSJB and Fr. Sean Kopczynski, MSJB; Fr. Matthew McNeely, FSSP; and Fr. Michael Rodriguez (Diocese of El Paso).
• Sponsored Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of Kazakhstan to offer the First ever Solemn Pontifical Latin Mass in the Diocese’s history.
• Provided logistical support for the first Requiem All Souls Mass.
• Contributed to a Latin Conference hosted at Belmont Abbey College.
• Organized a weekly fellowship coffee and feast celebrations after Sunday Mass.
• Established a Latin Mass information table to greet visitors and answer questions about Liturgy.
• Inaugurated a Latin Mass Class series to help catechize the faithful on the Latin Mass.
• Organized lectures to help evangelize the liturgy and traditional teachings of the Catholic faith featuring speakers including Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, Ryan Grant.

From 2011 through 2023, our Community has written numerous letters and petitions to Bishop Peter Jugis formally requesting for some form of a dedicated sacred space for our Community to worship.  We understand that Canon Law provides numerous options, from Personal Parishes, Quasi-Parishes, Missions, Oratories, Chapels, as well as other hybrid options.  We had seen these options being utilized for traditional Catholic communities in other dioceses, and also in the Diocese of Charlotte for many other Catholic communities such as Syro-Malabar, Korean, Vietnamese, African, and Hispanic Communities, but our community was always told no.  We even petitioned to have priests from one of the traditional priestly societies to be invited into the diocese, but those requests were all rejected, with the Diocese saying that what we have today is working well for them.

While these requests were not granted, beginning around the year 2016, the Diocese of Charlotte did grant the following requests:

• Traditional Midnight Mass for Christmas (Established December 2016)
• Friday 7:00 am Latin Mass (Established Winter 2016)
• Monday 8:30 am Latin Mass (Established Winter 2016)
• Traditional Rite of Confirmation (Established July 2016)
• Traditional Latin Triduum for Holy Week (Established April 2017)

And just as this prior period was marked with many additions to our Community’s worship, the subsequent years were marked by destabilization with much being cancelled and taken away:

• Cancellation of Monday Mass at St. Ann in Charlotte
• Cancellation of Mass at St. Michaels in Gastonia
• Cancellation of Mass at Sacred Heart in Salisbury
• Cancellation of Friday Mass at St. Mark’s in Huntersville
• Cancellation of Traditional Rite of Confirmation
• Cancellation of Latin Triduum for Holy Week (The three holiest days of the year!)
• Cancellation of Traditional Nuptial Masses in some locations
• Increase in public admonishments from the pulpit

Over the years, we have exhausted every attempt to communicate with Bishop Jugis begging him to consider our spiritual needs, writing about a dozen letters.

In early 2022, the Diocese of Charlotte invited our Charlotte Latin Mass Community to participate in the Diocesan Synod as one of many lay associations.  We were invited to meet with members of our community to gather responses to several scripted questions.  Despite all of the negative news about this Synod process, our CLMC leadership was pleased to have this opportunity to present our community’s spiritual needs directly to Bishop Jugis.  This was a significant undertaking and our CLMC synod response can be found here.  Unfortunately our participation in the Diocesan Synod resulted only in more cancellations and destabilization.

On November 17, 2022, our CLMC group received a letter from Bishop Jugis in response to our request for a chapel dedicated to the Traditional Latin Mass.  In short, Bishop Jugis rejected our request, and then stated that he will be implementing “the new course charted for the Church by Pope Francis” … “to return to a unitary form of celebration” … “the need to return in due time to the Roman Rite promulgated by Popes Paul VI and John Paul II” (the Novus Ordo Mass).

At the end of December 2023, Bishop Jugis announced that the number of Sunday Latin Masses would be reduced from six to four and that those four would only be allowed to continue until October 2025, after which petitions to continue would have be submitted along with details of steps taken to transition faithful to the Novus Ordo Mass.

In this present crisis of the Church where the rights of worship are increasingly being denied and destabilized by our regular authorities, this advocacy becomes all the more important.  In 2007, when Bishop Jugis stated that he didn’t want people to feel “hurt or left behind because of their devotion to earlier liturgical forms”, sadly this is how people in our community now feel.

In the 12 years since our first petition, our registry has grown from 50 families to now close to 1,200 families.  If you are interested in the Latin Mass and wish to receive our e-mails (or have questions), please contact us.