Guest Commentary by Chasen Reynolds. Chasen is a former resident in the Diocese of San Diego under Bishop Robert McElroy. He is Catholic husband and father and currently lives outside of Dallas, Texas. Chasen enjoys writing on and discussing American politics, the Traditional Latin Mass, woodworking, and cigars.
Earlier this week, the Vatican tapped Cardinal McElroy of San Diego to head the Archdiocese of Washington. Growing up in the Diocese of San Diego, my family and I experienced what the parishioners of Washington, D.C. can expect.
My family was involved in our parish. We were one of two families trained in the Extraordinary Form, my father was the scoutmaster of the affiliated troop, my four brothers and I were the altar servers at weekday morning Mass, and our mother was the organizer of the homeschool co-op which met at the parish. We spent two to three days a week on the church grounds for a good portion of our day, not counting the mornings with our father at daily Mass. Our church had a better than average parish life, a booming community, traditional liturgies, and beneficial ministries.
When I aged into my later high school years, I could sense the attitude of the parish shift. Our weekly High Mass was swapped with a Low Mass and moved to an inconvenient time, causing attendance to lessen. Our daily Mass returned to the versus populum orientation, after being changed to ad orientum just a short time before. Suddenly we were “Latin Massers,” as opposed to a family that attended the 6:00 rather than the 11:00. Nothing really of much concern to a late teenager getting ready to leave for college. However, looking back at the timeline of the changes, it all coincided with a diocesan shift. San Diego had a new bishop.
I recall many a Sunday homily where our pastor felt obligated to clarify some erroneous, or, at the least, very confusing letter put out by the Bishop earlier that week. Further clarifications and discussions often took place on the car ride home from Mass or during post Rosary conversations between my siblings and me and our parents. We grew up for the most part knowing as an abstract but disheartening idea that we had a “bad bishop.”
For the most part, our faith life remained unchanged: we went to Mass, served on the weekday mornings, went to co-op, and did all the things we had always done as a big Catholic family – albeit with the occasional outlandish and less than sound comments from the bishop.
It was not until the now infamous pandemic, and the attached liberties it gave to our decision-making clergy, that our faith life was changed. In March of 2020, Bishop McElroy took the hysteria and panic to extreme heights. It was not enough to enact social distancing in churches, or to require masking, or even to require the faithful of the diocese to attend (if you can call it that) Mass via livestream. The Bishop completely dispensed the Catholics of San Diego from any obligation to attend Sunday Mass entirely. In a time of uncertainty, worry, and fear, the faithful were completely exonerated of the necessity to attend Mass. Not only was the requirement to attend vanquished, but the ability to attend as well. With the aid of the California government, McElroy was able to padlock the doors of his nearly 100 churches, serving over 1 million Catholics.
The Bishop did not make it easy on his pastors. As parishes turned to livestreams, one could expect a mostly normal Mass. There were altar servers, lectors, choirs (or at least a cantor), and sacristans. However, the parishes had to be mindful to not let too many people be seen on camera at the same time, lest they find themselves the recipient of a “gentle reminder” from the diocese on the proper distance protocols. Masses were changed to make sure paths were not crossed and that altar servers did not hand cruets directly to the priest. Masking was mandatory; however, muffled Consecration prayers through a livestream microphone are detrimental for the formation of the faithful. Let’s not mention the image of a masked priest celebrating the Mass.
Easter was fast approaching – certainly we would be allowed to attend the Tridium and Easter Sunday Mass. Wrong. It was not subtly announced that by orders from outside the parish, the doors would be locked on the Easter Vigil. My mother was a fire-brand and thrived, perhaps a little too much, in defying what she felt were unjust orders. She demanded that we load the car, drive to the church, and open the doors. Pulling into an empty parking lot of a usually brimming parish of young families just ten minutes before the Easter Vigil began was more than disheartening. To my brothers and my embarrassment, she made us try the doors, which were, of course, locked. We knew our pastor, whom we saw everyday at morning Mass, was just on the inside of the doors hearing his faithful parishioners simply try to attend Mass on Easter. We knelt in the parking lot facing towards the altar with the livestream on a phone. Mere steps away from our Blessed Lord in the Eucharist, forbidden by a bishop to receive the Source and Summit of our faith on the Solemnity of Solemnities. My parents did a phenomenal job keeping the focus of the season on Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, despite the choking restrictions.
Mass attendance was permitted to begin again sometime towards the end of the summer, albeit outdoors, on makeshift altars, with unbecoming tabernacles and irreverence abound. It is no small thing to remove Our Lord from His home, or to remove the people from the physical act of entering a church door, blessing themselves with holy water, genuflecting to enter a pew, and kneeling before the tabernacle. By Christmas time, the Masses were still being held outdoors. This marked the second major holiday that San Diegans spent outside of a church. All the while the entire diocese was still under a blanket dispensation from Sunday Mass “for the duration of the crisis.” We wouldn’t attend an indoor Mass within the diocese for nearly a year. Finally, in June of 2021, 15 months after the Bishop’s original shutting down of the diocese, most restrictions were officially lifted. When churches first unlocked their doors, eager parishioners walked back into mostly recognizable sanctuaries. Holy water fonts had been drained to mitigate contamination and every other pew was roped off to ensure proper distancing – yet still, it was highly encouraged to stay home if you felt weary returning to Mass after a year and a quarter.
A large impetus to return to Mass indoors was the arrival of the Covid vaccine. Catholics were quick to point out the more than dubious nature of the vaccine’s testing, engineering, and production. Bishop McElroy proclaimed, with a straight face, to his diocese that it was “entirely morally legitimate” to receive any leading vaccine. He clarified that he meant the Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson or Astra-Zeneca variations of the vaccination. In his closing, he stated that receiving the shot was an obvious show of “love for our neighbor and our God.”
Pushing his flock to receive the morally problematic vaccine was his most charitable take on the matter. The soon to be Cardinal wrote to his priests in August of 2021 urging them not to sign off on any religious exemptions from the vaccine that their parishioners might bring to them. McElroy was cited saying that his priests should not engage in “merging personal beliefs with doctrinal authority.” He instructed his pastors to deny such requests especially when it was “motivated by beliefs that diverge from Church teaching”
To punctuate his persecution of faithful Catholics in the Diocese, the now Cardinal McElroy turned his attention to Catholic homeschooling families. As I mentioned earlier, my mother was instrumental in our parishes’ homeschool co-op. It is where I received the bulk of my education. A good education. We studied the Great Books and the history of the Church, along with the usual state required courses. Many families’ children received their education there. In September of 2024, the Diocese established a new policy forbidding homeschool groups from renting parish space. The policy claimed that “parish run schools and religious education programs are the primary means by which the Church accomplishes its teaching mission for children and young people.” The diocese forgot, or neglected to consult, the Catechism of the Catholic Church which clearly states that “parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children.” (CCC 2223). Oftentimes these co-ops met once or twice weekly in the parish halls, and almost always paid some sort of rent to the church. One would think that a bankrupt diocese might benefit from some extra income. Ideology and Catechism-opposing agenda triumphed yet again under McElroy.
The crown jewel of this policy is that non-Catholic entities are still fully permitted to rent Diocesan space for activities, so long as they have nothing to do with homeschooling. Each request is to be reviewed on a “case-by-case basis with approval by the Bishop, always emphasizing that there are no conflicts in its mission with Catholic doctrine.” Of course, under McElroy, that criteria means next to nothing.
To the good people of Washington D.C., our faith remains in Our Lord. My family survived spiritually the afflictions of a self-interested leader through Faith, a devotion to Our Lady, and the holy Rosary. Lead your families in the Faith, and grow strong communities with your fellow parishioners. Entrust to the Lord what we cannot control, and pray every day for our clergy. Verso L’alto.
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