The images conjured up in the popular imagination by the dark hollers of Appalachia—cornbread cooked in cast-iron skillets, old folks rocking on front porches, the singing of clear high tenor voices, verdant hills scattered with little white country churches—are still pervasive, from Yancey to Meat Camp (a real place), from Wise to Sweetwater, from Beckley to Marion. But tucked among these communities lie little clusters of strange and mysterious people, vestiges of something even older. Some are newcomers to the hollers and hilltops, others are descended from those who first built their homes here centuries ago. My people (as we call them here) fall into the latter category. But among them I am the first, according to my extensive genealogical research, in more than four hundred years to be part of the aforementioned “strange and mysterious” group. I mean, of course, that I am a Catholic.
When our family of five (which has since grown to seven) entered the Catholic Church in 2020, we did so at an Air Force chapel that I might describe as having all the splendor of a Kmart. It was not the via pulchritudinis that brought us to the faith. Instead it was the truth—simple, extraordinary—of Our Lord Jesus Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, “the source and summit of human life.” Once we accepted that truth, everything else fell into place.
Since then, we have lived on two continents, visited dozens of parishes, and even were part of a parish in Seattle served by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter. There have been many wonderful, transcendent Masses that brought tears to our eyes, and some simple ones in much more austere settings. But we have been blessed never to have encountered what we would recognize as liturgical abuses, and have always known that Christ was truly present at Mass. As such, I have never participated in the so-called “liturgy wars.” In fact, I have actively avoided them. We settled more than three years ago back in our home state of North Carolina. Here our parish priest has offered a beautifully reverent Mass in the new rite in addition to saying the traditional Mass at the mission church eight miles further down the road at least weekly.
Parish life for us has been a place of joy and cohesion. Children whose families attend Mass together—in English, Spanish, or Latin—are friends. They pray together; they attend the same religious education classes and are members of the same Little Saints’ Club. Families gather to celebrate Oktoberfest in autumn and La Guadalupana in December, and all the great celebrations for Our Lady in May. When mothers meet up for coffee or lunch, we never stop to think whether so-and-so’s son serves at the T.L.M. or the Novus Ordo (most boys serve at all the Masses, taking turns according to their respective families’ schedules). We are all a part of Saint Elizabeth of the Hill Country Parish. We have the same beloved pastor. The same classrooms for our children. The same faith.
The depth of this unity was never so strongly on display as it was the last weekend of September 2024, when Hurricane Helene utterly destroyed vast swaths of Appalachia. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Helene was responsible for the deaths of at least two hundred fifty people, with dozens still unaccounted for; it caused nearly eighty billion dollars in damage, and wreaked havoc on the local ecosystem. It is already considered among the ten most devastating hurricanes to hit the United States in modern history. The water has receded, but its effects will last for decades. In our county, some parishioners lost their homes. Many lost thousands of dollars worth of property, including my family. Some of our neighbors lost their lives. In the aftermath, when the roads were still covered in silt from the riverbeds, and we were all still airing out our houses, our little parish community banded together. People from all over donated supplies; we came together to offer material aid, and we did what we could to bind up one another’s wounds, physical, emotional, and spiritual.
Our parish’s bond has only strengthened in the eight months since the storm. We wept and prayed together with the passing of Pope Francis, and rejoiced at the installation of Pope Leo XIV. Whatever Mass we regularly attend, parishioners chat about following the example of the Holy Father Pope Leo and teaching our children the beautiful Latin prayers he has been singing at both Masses and public audiences—the Gloria, the Sanctus, the Pater Noster, the Regina Caeli. We have even been sharing videos from the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome to learn together how to chant these ancient prayers in the same way our Holy Father demonstrates for us, and as so many saints have done across the centuries. Seeing our children begin to chant along at Mass has been a balm to many wounded hearts.
You may, then, imagine our parish community’s devastation, confusion, and sorrow this week when Bishop Martin, our shepherd here in the Diocese of Charlotte, announced new restrictions upon the Traditional Latin Mass. Our pain was greatly amplified by an email from His Excellency which stated, among many other things, that no one affected by Hurricane Helene was going to be affected by the new guidelines, because the Latin Mass had not been offered in Western North Carolina since 2023. To the contrary, as multiple sources will confirm, mission chapels have been publicly offering the T.L.M. both in Blowing Rock (the mission chapel to our parish in Boone) and in Marion at Our Lady of the Angels mission, as well as the mission in Highlands dedicated to Our Lady of the Mountains.
Rutherford County, where Marion is located, is a place close to my heart. My beloved father, two grandparents, and great-grandparents going back to the 1700s are buried there in a sleepy Baptist church cemetery. It is my ancestral homeland. I was there in early May to bury my late grandmother. And I assure you, Rutherford County was at least as devastated by Helene as we in Watauga County were, if not more so. Three people there died in the storm. Thousands suffered for many weeks without adequate food, water, heat, or necessary medication as roads were rendered totally impassable. Contrary to the document attributed to His Excellency, these communities have definitely been nourished by the Extraordinary Form of the Mass since 2023. And yes, we were most definitely impacted by Helene.
I am no canonist, I cannot authoritatively speak to Bishop Martin’s statements about Traditionis custodes or his view of how it should be implemented. (Though I would note that other bishops, including Archbishop Cordileone of San Francisco, seem to have very different ideas regarding its implementation.) To lose access to the old Mass, which formed many of the saints whose lives urged me to learn more about Catholicism, and whose witness ultimately brought my family of soon-to-be-seven, home to the Catholic faith, would break my heart. But I am only one lay woman. I will not disobey or disparage my bishop, the shepherd who is a successor of the Apostles. I respect his authority and his position, and I have loved, and will continue to love him as my shepherd. But I do hope, with sincerity and humility, that our shepherd will not forget those of us in these dark hollers, easy though it may be to do.
I hope, with all my heart, that Bishop Martin will see us for what we are: human beings with souls, souls which have been blessed and offered immense comfort in bleak times, by the Mass, including and even especially the traditional Latin Mass. We are his sheep, his flock, looking to him for loving and kind guidance, for comfort during affliction, and for mercy. Many of us are a tiny minority within our home counties; we are some of the most “othered” Catholics in the United States, frequently ostracized by the non-Catholics around us. Converts in this area often lose everyone in their lives when they choose to become Catholic. Our children are regularly informed by other children their age that they will go to hell if they die Catholic. While we have wonderful friends who love us in spite of our faith, we would hope our shepherd would not also be loving us in spite of our love for the Church’s sacred traditions.
My plea to Bishop Martin, as a daughter speaking to a spiritual father, is simple. Please don’t punish us further. I beg that you see the beauty of these little western North Carolina parishes, where so many of us regularly attend Masses in Latin, English, and Spanish. We are, to quote a song sung by so many of my ancestors before me and which still often echoes through the hills, “poor wayfaring strangers, traveling through this world of woe.”
Let us not be strangers to one another.
