James Massa
James Massa was born on September 3, 1960, in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Andrew and Irene Gilbert Massa, and was raised in Cranford. He graduated from Union Catholic High School in 1978, earned a Bachelor of Arts in theology and history from Boston College in 1982, and a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1985, before studying at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington. He completed a doctorate in systematic theology at Fordham University in 1997, writing his dissertation under Cardinal Avery Dulles, and he was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Brooklyn on October 25, 1986, by Bishop Francis Mugavero.
As a priest he served as parochial vicar at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Forest Hills, Queens, as chaplain at Queens College and at Kansas Newman College, and as a theology professor at Pope John XXIII National Seminary, the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, and St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie. From 2005 to 2011 he was executive director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and from 2007 he served as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, work that made ecumenical dialogue the center of his ministry.
Pope Francis appointed him an auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn on May 19, 2015, and he was consecrated on July 20, 2015, holding the titular see of Bardstown. In Brooklyn he served as moderator of the curia and as vicar for Catholic education, and since 2020 he has also been rector of St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, forming the priests of the New York archdiocese while continuing as an auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn.
- 2005Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio named Fr. Massa coordinator of the celebration of the Mass in the extraordinary form, known as the Tridentine rite, in the Diocese of Brooklyn; while serving at the USCCB he traveled to Brooklyn most weekends to celebrate the extraordinary form, as The Tablet reported. This is a pre-TC appointment by the ordinary and a record of celebrating, not a TC-era governing act of Massa's own. ↗
Massa is the one man in this group with a documented pre-TC connection to the older liturgy: in 2005 Bishop DiMarzio named him coordinator of the celebration of the Mass in the extraordinary form in the Diocese of Brooklyn, and while serving at the USCCB he traveled to Brooklyn most weekends to celebrate the extraordinary form, as the diocesan newspaper reported. That is dated context only. It is a pre-TC appointment by the ordinary and a record of celebrating, not a TC-era governing act of Massa's own, and under the project rules neither celebrating nor a predecessor's appointment moves posture.
No TC-era governing act of his own was found. Searching on October 24, 2026, returned no authorization, decree, dispensation sought, or appointment sustaining the 1962 Missal signed by Massa after July 16, 2021. The diocese's TC-era narrowing is its ordinary's: Bishop Brennan reduced the diocesan Traditional Latin Masses from three churches to two in October 2025, ending the St. Cecilia celebration, and that decision is Brennan's, not Massa's, even though Massa serves as his auxiliary.
No site count is asserted for Massa, because an auxiliary holds no see whose sites could be counted as his, and no society, Roman dispensation, or 2026 statement on the Society of St. Pius X of his own was found. His pre-TC coordinator role is preserved in the actions below with its date, so the record shows what he did do without letting it stand in for a TC-era posture he has not evidenced.