ANATOMY OF
BRAVERY:
MORE ON THE
CASE OF FATHER STEPHEN ZIGRANG
Thomas A.
Droleskey
REMNANT
COLUMNIST,
The brave stand taken against the Novus Ordo and in
defense of Traditional Latin Mass by Father Stephen Zigrang, the pastor of Saint
Andrew’s Church in
As was reported in the July 31 issue of The Remnant, Father
Zigrang was told by Bishop of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, the Most
Reverend Joseph Fiorenza, on
Dear Father
Zigrang:
This will confirm
our agreement for you to have a good vacation and to make a retreat between now
and
I want to make a
very strong suggestion for your retreat. You are familiar with Father Benedict
Groeschel, C.F.R. He operates a
I leave for
vacation on Monday [
Faithfully yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Joseph A.
Fiorenza, Bishop of Galveston-Houston.
Bishop Fiorenza’s strong “suggestion” that
Father Zigrang make a retreat and seek counseling from Father Groeschel itself raises a number of interesting questions.
This writer has known Father Groeschel since 1983,
although our contact pretty much ceased as a result of my public defense of the
Traditional Latin Mass and my criticism of the governance and policies of Pope
John Paul II. However, there was a time in my uninformed past in the 1980s when
I attended days of recollection given by Father Groeschel. It was during a day of recollection at
It is likely, therefore,
that Father Groeschel would not be an “honest broker”
when evaluating someone attached to the Traditional Latin
(Father Groeschel’s reputation for orthodoxy
hinges principally these days on his programs televised on the Eternal Word
Television Network. The late Father John A. Hardon,
however, told me shortly before his death that he could not endorse Father Groeschel’s In the Presence of Our Lord, a book about
Eucharistic adoration that does have a lot of interesting history in it, because
of Father Groeschel’s reliance on the Eucharistic
theology of the late Father Karl Rahner. For the sake
of completeness, though, it should be noted that Father Groeschel is a tireless servant of the poor and was been
imprisoned a number of times as part of Operation Rescue. He is associated with
a number of homes for unwed mothers. It would be intellectually dishonest to
dismiss this work solely because of a possible predilection against the
Traditional Latin Mass and traditional Catholics, whether priests or
laity.)
That Father Zigrang’s actions were neither rash
nor disrespectful of Bishop Fiorenza’s authority is
evidenced by his own letter to the bishop of
Dear Bishop
Fiorenza:
This July will mark my
sixth year as pastor of St. Andrew parish in Channevel. I feel it is time to
make a change for the following reasons:
1) The numbers of
Spanish-speaking increase daily. The people have expressed in writing to you and
in a conversation with Bishop Vasquez the need for a priest to minister to their
specific needs. Though I limp along in Spanish, the people prefer a priest of
their own culture.
2) My effectiveness is
limited also on account of my traditional view. I am not able to preach what I
believe is the Catholic Faith without criticism both from a small but vocal
segment of the parish and your own offices sympathetic to that group. For
example, I believe and prefer the traditional the Catholic Faith and its
practice but this makes me out of step with the modern church. It is getting
more difficult for me to say the new Mass, give Communion in the hand, and be
served at the altar by girls and women. The vocation prospect is dismal to say
the least and there is nothing I can do about it under these restrictive
circumstances.
If I preach my convictions
you do not support me.
Therefore may I suggest
that you assign me to a parish or mission where I can celebrate the sacraments
in the traditional manner. This can be like a personal parish where people from
the diocese can go to receive the sacraments and worship at Mass in the
traditional way in Latin. I am thinking of the future and vocations. You know ho
long it takes to "grow a priest," and the way things are going there will soon
be no priest here, and I truly believe that a more traditional setting will
foster vocations. Yes it will be an uphill battle, but the solution is certainly
not more of the same thing, married permanent deacons and dedicated laity. The
salvation of souls requires priests and their essential and irreplaceable
ministry.
Dear Bishop, I apologize
for the harsh words and attitude that led to my transfer here in the first
place. You were very wise, though, in relieving me from the tribunal where I was
losing my faith and I didn’t know it. I’ve learned a lesson and have enjoyed
being the pastor of Saint Andrew’s. But I feel that my effectiveness is no
longer what it was when I first came here. And I truly believe I would be of
more help to the diocese and the future of the Church if I could be released to
work exclusively in a more traditional Catholic environment to foster priestly
vocations.
Please help me realize this
proposal for the sake of my soul and for the many people who no longer feel they
belong to the modern Catholic Church.
Faithfully and
sincerely,
Fr.
Stephen P. Zigrang, Pastor."
As was reported in the July 31 issue of The Remnant, Bishop
Fiorenza never responded to Father Zigrang’s January
17 letter. Thus, it can be seen that Father Zigrang did not act rashly or
without respecting the authority of his diocesan ordinary. It was Bishop
Fiorenza who did not treat his subject and brother priest with even a modicum of
natural decency, no less pastoral solicitude.
Indeed, Bishop Fiorenza has demonstrated a keen sensitivity to the
parishioners of Saint Andrew’s parish who complained about Father Zigrang’s preaching (against contraception and abortion, in
defense of modesty of dress, the necessity of regular confession, the
possibility of going to Hell for all eternity, total consecration to Our Lady’s
Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart) and his decisions to end the distribution of
Communion under both kinds and Communion in the hand. Bishop Fiorenza was more
than willing to respond to complaints about Father Zigrang. He
demonstrated no desire to respond to him until after the events of June
28-29 at Saint Andrew’s.
Bishop Fiorenza prepared a statement about Father Zigrang’s situation that was read to parishioners at Saint
Andrew’s on Saturday evening, July 5, and Sunday, July 6. The tone of the
statement was similar to the letter shown Father Zigrang on July 1 in the
immediate aftermath of Father’s public celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass
on June 28-29.
My Dear Parishioners of
The unity which Christ
prayed for at the Last Supper is essential for the life and mission of the
Church, This unity must be maintained not only in doctrinal and moral teachings
but also in the liturgical directives of the Church.
Last weekend Fr. Steve
Zigrang announced to you that in the future he will celebrate parish masses in
the Tridentine rite rather than according to the Revised Roman Missal which was
approved by Pope Paul VI following the Second Vatican Council. No priest has the
authority to make such a decision without the permission of his Bishop. During
this past week, I have discussed this matter with Fr. Zigrang and expressed my
serious concern that a violation of the liturgical directives approved by the
highest authority in the Church would harm the unity of the parish committed to
his pastoral care. The Mass is essential to Catholic faith and worship and
should not become a matter of confusion and division in a parish. I have asked
Fr. Zigrang to give more thought and prayer to this serious matter and suggested
that he take a vacation and make a retreat before any final decisions are made.
Fr. Zigrang graciously accepted my request.
For the next few weeks
Father Clint Bessler and other priests from the Seminary will provide weekend
Masses for your parish. On week days, I will ask the deacons of the parish to
conduct a communion service.
Finally, I want to say that
Fr. Zigrang has been a good and zealous priest for the past 25 years. He has
been a good and dedicated pastor of this parish. I am grateful to him for his
faithful priestly ministry. I ask for your prayers that he will continue to be a
faithful and obedient priest so that he continues to serve as your pastor.
Sincerely in
Christ,
Most
Reverend Joseph A. Fiorenza,
Bishop
of Galveston-Houston
Bishop Fiorenza’s statement contains the
erroneous assertion that a priest needs the permission of a diocesan bishop to
celebrate the Traditional Latin
A Mr. James Frazier of
Father Zigrang told us
Thursday night [July 10, 2003] that he had heard that last Sunday (July 6) at
the 10:30 Novus Ordo celebration, the carafe (a mere beverage
container!--oh well, I guess it was a ‘meal’) containing what was supposed to be
the consecrated Precious Blood came apart on the altar and spilled all over it.
There were people rushing for a purificator, etc., a
real disaster. Father Zigrang had told the congregation that he would not be
offering the Precious Blood to them. He gave several reasons, among which was
the danger of spilling it. It seems more than a coincidence--what are the odds
for it happening? That the incident occurred the very next Sunday after Father
did his last Mass there. It reminds me of the splitting of the
Trying to Convince Father
Zigrang of his need for counseling
As is well known, revolutionaries seek to convince perfectly sane people
who believe in “counter-revolutionary” ideas that they are insane. There are
instances when truly committed revolutionaries believe that they are actually
acting in the best interests of the person who is wedded to the past. There
other instances, however, when a concerted effort is made quite maliciously to
create a scenario for those in the general public who do not know the history of
the past that anyone who asserts the past is not what the revolutionaries
contend is in need of real psychological help. It appears as though there is
evidence of both approaches in the case of Father Zigrang.
To wit, diocesan vice chancellor Father Troy Gately, who had been a student of Father Zigrang’s at Saint Mary’s Seminary in
Father Gately spent four hours on the evening
of
The question of attempting to impugn Father Zigrang’s psychological health, a tactic perfected by both
Vladimir I. Lenin and his successor, Joseph Stalin, in the
The
Although it took nearly a
week, The Houston Chronicle published a fairly balanced story on the
Father Zigrang situation on
Celebrating the
contemporary Mass in the ancient language is permitted for good pastoral
reasons, said the Rev. Michael J. Barrett, director of Holy Cross Chapel in
downtown
The new Mass
changed some prayers, required the priest to face the congregation and omitted a
series of prayers the priest says before going to the altar, Barrett said. The
major change was that almost overnight Mass was no longer celebrated in Latin
worldwide, but in the vernacular of a parish's country or region, he said.
‘Some people found it hard to adjust to,’
said Barrett, who was a young altar server when the Tridentine Mass was still
common.
Still, there are
some Catholics who ‘associate the Latin Mass with going back to a more faithful
time or truer liturgy,’ Barrett said. For example, priests affiliated with the
Society of St. Pius X regularly celebrate the traditional
Hidden in Father Barrett’s comments, which he said in a e-mail to this
writer were accurately reflected by Houston Chronicle reporter Tara
Dooley, is the false assertion that the “Tridentine Mass” was “instituted” in
1570 after the Council of Trent, making it appear as though it is not unusual
for a council to invent a
With that in mind, therefore, this writer e-mailed Father Barrett with
the following questions on
1) According to the way the
information was phrased in the Houston Chronicle article of
2) The Traditional Latin
Mass has its origins in the fifth century. As many leading liturgical scholars
have noted, including the late Fathers Adrian Fortescue and Joseph Jungmann,
S.J., as well as the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, most
of the elements of the Traditional Latin Mass have remain unchanged from the
time of Pope Saint Gregory the Great, who changed only a few minor elements of
the Mass used in most of the Roman rite. Would you quarrel with these scholars?
3) Is it not important to
present the truth of the organic development of the Traditional Latin Mass as
opposed to the novelty of the synthetic creation of the Novus Ordo when speaking to
members of the press--and through them, obviously, to the faithful?
4) Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger praised the work of Monsignor Klaus Gamber's The Reform of the Roman Liturgy as
manifesting a clear-cut case of a falsification of the liturgy as a result of a
fabricated liturgy. Do you disagree with Cardinal Ratzinger's statement, included in the foreword to the
French language edition of Monsignor Gamber's book?
6) Saint Josemaria Escriva Balaguer y Albas so disliked the
Novus Ordo that he requested
permission from Pope Paul VI to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, which is
the only Mass he celebrated until his death on
7) Saint Josemaria Escriva Balaguer y Albas noted in the
1960s that the removal of the prayers after Low Mass would produce disastrous
results for the Church and the world. Do you agree or
disagree?
In an e-mail sent to this writer on
Indeed, traditionally-minded diocesan priests who receive spiritual
direction from Opus Dei these days are told not to make waves, to be docile to
their bishops, and to admonish the faithful who attend “indult” Masses never to
criticize their bishops nor to complain about only having the Traditional Mass
offered on Sundays and not on weekdays. Thus, priests and the laity are
encouraged to remain quiet in the face of offenses against truth and tradition,
the essence of the heresy of quietism. All examples of heroic sanctity, such as
Father Zigrang’s, in the face of such offenses are
ignored or denigrated as opposed to the spirit of “the Work.” This quietism (or
semi-quietism, to be more precise) reaffirms priests in an attitude of clerical
careerism that works against any possible inclination to exhibit manly Christian
courage in defense of the necessity of the restoration of the Traditional Latin
Mass.
Stonewalling from the
Diocese of Galveston-Houston
As was mentioned in the July 31 issue of The Remnant, a series of
questions were e-mailed to Mrs. Annette Gonzales Taylor on July 3, 2003. Mrs.
Taylor told me in the aforementioned July 10 interview, however, that there
would be no answer to the questions listed below (apart from the one about the
psychological health of bishops and priests devoted to the Traditional Latin
Mass and the correction of Monsignor Rossi’s contention in his conversation with
me that Mr. Jerry Zigrang had made the first contact with the Diocese of
Galveston-Houston) because the diocesan chancellor, Monsignor Frank Rossi, was
personally “offended and insulted” by the tone of my questioning of him in an
telephone interview on July 4, 2003. The following seven questions, therefore,
remain unanswered by the Diocese of Galveston-Houston:
1) There are approximately
twenty dioceses in this nation that permit the daily celebration of the
Traditional Latin Mass by priests who are in full communion with the Successor
of Saint Peter. The ordinaries of these dioceses have demonstrated great
solicitude toward the needs of those who are attached to the Traditional Latin
Mass. Bishop Raymond Burke of the Diocese of LaCrosse
even went so far as to personally consecrate Saint Mary's Oratory in Wausau,
Wisconsin, in the traditional rite, praising the work of the Institute of Christ
the King, a traditional religious community erected by Pope John Paul II
himself. Is it Bishop Fiorenza's contention that his
brother bishop is psychologically imbalanced for permitting the daily
celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass? It is Bishop Fiorenza's contention that Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos was mistaken when
he said in a celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass at Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in
2) Why cannot Bishop
Fiorenza show the same solicitude for the needs of traditionally minded
Catholics as at least twenty of his brother bishops around the
3) Why did Bishop Fiorenza
fail to respond to Father Zigrang's
4) Why does Bishop Fiorenza
fail to act against priests and teachers in his diocese who deny articles
contained in the Deposit of Faith while he takes immediate action against Father
Zigrang?
5) Why does not Bishop
Fiorenza permit advertising for the lone indult Mass at Annunciation Catholic
Church in
6) There is a
7) In the aforementioned
letter of
The answers to those questions are pretty self-explanatory, which is the
real reason why the Diocese of Galveston-Houston will not answer them.
Additional questions were posed of Mrs. Taylor about a related matter (see
separate story on Episcopalian priest Eric Law). They will also go unanswered,
said Mrs. Taylor.
How
is Father Zigrang?
As a man of deep faith and total trust in the Mother of God, Father
Zigrang is doing very well. He is accepting the cross of misunderstanding and
slander that has come his way, offering all to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart to be
used as she sees fit. Such is his total trust in her. He is grateful for the
many scores of letters that have been written in support of his actions. And he
is celebrating the Mass of our fathers privately as he spends his time away from
Saint Andrew’s. Although the whereabouts of Father Zigrang’s retreat is unknown, it is fairly certain that he
will not be going to Father Groeschel’s Trinity
Retreat House in Larchmont, New York. More details of Father Zigrang’s situation will be the subject of a further story
in The Remnant.
In the meantime, however, readers are still requested to keep Father
Stephen P. Zigrang in their prayers, to have Masses said for him, to commend him
to the Mother God, and to pray that other priests will follow his brave example
of fidelity to the simple truth that it is the Mass that
matters.