Joseph Strickland
Joseph Edward Strickland was born in 1958 in Fredericksburg, Texas, and ordained a priest of the Diocese of Dallas in 1985. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him the fourth Bishop of Tyler in 2012; he was consecrated that November. He became one of the most outspoken conservative voices in the American hierarchy, with a large social-media following and a forceful public defense of orthodoxy, the sanctity of life, and the Eucharist.
After a Vatican-ordered apostolic visitation of his governance in mid-2023, and his refusal of a request to resign, Pope Francis removed him from the office of Bishop of Tyler on 11 November 2023 — without any official reason given. He remains a bishop of the Church without a diocese, and has continued an active public ministry of preaching, pilgrimages, and public rosaries.
Of all the living American bishops, none has paid a higher price for the Mass of Ages than Joseph Strickland. He came to the old rite late — by his own account he had not said the words of consecration in Latin once in thirty-five years of priesthood — and then, having found it, he would not let it go. When Traditionis Custodes came in 2021 and bishop after bishop moved to restrict and suppress, Strickland refused, in words that have become a kind of banner: 'I can't starve out part of my flock.'
He defended the ancient Mass in public when it was costly to do so, calling its treatment under the new regime a distortion that handles the Mass 'as though it were a poison that must be eliminated.' He governed a small Texas diocese with a loud voice and an unbending orthodoxy — and in November 2023, after refusing to resign, he was removed from his see. The Holy See gave no official reason. But a year to the day after his removal, the Vatican stripped the Traditional Latin Mass from the whole Diocese of Tyler — every location but a single Fraternity of St. Peter parish — and the faithful drew their own conclusion.
We render the verdict plainly. Whatever one makes of his bluntness toward the Holy Father — and prudence may fault the manner — on the one question this page asks, Bishop Strickland stood exactly where a shepherd should stand. He kept the old Mass for his people when keeping it was dangerous, and he gave up his diocese rather than take it from them. He is, without qualification, a friend of Tradition — and something rarer still: a confessor for it. May he be vindicated.