Detroit’s Decree: The Illusion of Unity and the Targeting of Tradition

Another diocese kneels before Traditionis Custodes, while the faithful are left standing in the rain.

On June 12, 2025, Archbishop Edward Weisenburger of Detroit issued a formal decree enforcing new Traditionis Custodes implementation norms in his archdiocese. The decree, sanctified in bureaucratic prose and draped in the language of “unity,” follows the playbook authored by Francis and rubber-stamped by Arthur Roche: suppress the Traditional Latin Mass, strangle its permitted remnants, and do it all with pastoral smiles and notary seals.

This decree is about the slow asphyxiation of tradition under the pretense of ecclesial discipline. It’s about treating the Mass of the Ages as a suspicious relic, allowed only under tightly surveilled conditions. And it’s about bishops, newly emboldened by Rome, performing the clerical version of asset forfeiture: repossessing what generations of saints once built, and doling out scraps as if they were indulgences granted by personal favor.

Let’s walk through what’s really happening here.

One Shrine to Rule Them All

The centerpiece of the new Detroit policy is the St. Joseph Shrine in Detroit, a personal parish operated by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest (ICKSP). It has been allowed to continue public ministry under the 1962 Missal. The archbishop’s decree effectively says: “Tradition may continue to exist, but only here, and only because we permit it.”

There are no new permissions. No expansions. No refuge for parishes or priests who wish to offer the Traditional Latin Mass outside the already fenced-in perimeter of St. Joseph Shrine. Even the Shrine itself is carefully described as allowed to function due to prior status, not intrinsic right or divine inheritance.

And if you’re a diocesan priest not part of the ICKSP? You must beg.

Daily Mass by Permission Only

For diocesan clergy who wish to celebrate the TLM on weekdays using the 1962 Missale Romanum, the new norms lay out the humiliating process of application. A priest must:

1. Prove he is rubrically competent.

2. Swear a “testamentary written statement” affirming Vatican II and the Novus Ordo as the norm.

3. Promise not to offer the TLM when it would amount to bination (offering two Masses a day) or when no faithful are present.

This is the bureaucracy of jailers.

Imagine the priest, trained, pious, educated in the Roman rite, who must now sign a loyalty oath to the very revolution that destroyed the Mass of his ancestors, simply to whisper the prayers that countless martyrs once died for.

And all this, mind you, is just for weekday Masses. Sunday? Don’t even think about it.

The Mirage of Unity

Archbishop Weisenburger frames all this as an effort “to safeguard and promote the unity of the Church.” But unity at the expense of truth is not unity, it is surrender.

Where was this concern for unity when clown Masses, Pachamama rituals, and balloon-blessing priests desecrated sanctuaries without rebuke?

Where was this concern for unity when German bishops openly promoted heresy while remaining in full communion?

Where was this concern when, for decades, faithful Catholics were gaslit and ridiculed for clinging to the very rite now begrudgingly permitted in one Detroit parish?

No, unity isn’t the goal. Uniformity in rupture is.

The ancient Roman rite is seen not as a source of grace but as a threat to the program. And so it must be domesticated, quarantined, and, eventually, forgotten.

The Lay Faithful? Irrelevant.

What’s striking in this decree is how utterly invisible the laity are.

Nowhere is there a reference to the growing number of young families who attend the TLM. Nowhere is there mention of the documented fruit borne by reverent liturgy: higher vocations, stronger marriages, more confessions, and deeper catechesis.

The only laity who matter are those who will obediently transfer their affections to the Novus Ordo, reprogrammed like apps after a software update.

But we are not software. We are sheep, and the shepherds have turned away from the flock.

A Blueprint for the Future

Make no mistake: this decree is the template.

More bishops will follow. More dioceses will restrict the TLM to isolated locations, using the language of canonical obedience to mask the deeper goal of transformation: of liturgical memory, theological anthropology, and ecclesial identity.

The trap is being closed slowly, lest too many notice at once.

But some of us see it. And we will not forget. We will not abandon what was never abrogated and what was never theirs to take away.

We are not radicals. We are not rebels. We are simply Roman Catholics, clinging to what the Church always taught, always believed, and always handed down.

And when our bishops, in lockstep with a modernist Rome, issue decrees that treat the Traditional Mass like a contagion to be contained, we will remember that the catacombs were not born out of disobedience, but fidelity.

Final Thought

In 2021, Traditionis Custodes was declared necessary to “foster unity.” In 2025, the result is institutionalized division; division between what the Church was and what it is rapidly becoming.

Let Detroit be a warning. Not just for what it says, but for what it refuses to say.

They may try to bury it; but they forget this Mass has survived emperors, heretics, revolutions, and reformers. It will outlast them too..