Michael Fors Olson
Michael Fors Olson was born on June 29, 1966, in Park Ridge, Illinois, and ordained a priest of the Diocese of Fort Worth on June 3, 1994. A moral theologian, he took his doctorate in moral theology with a concentration in bioethics from the Alphonsian Academy in Rome, and served as rector of Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving, which forms priests for the dioceses of north Texas. Pope Francis named him the fourth Bishop of Fort Worth on November 19, 2013, and he was ordained and installed on January 29, 2014.
Twenty-six days later he wrote to Fisher More College withdrawing permission for the public Traditional Latin Mass that had been offered there daily for some three years under his predecessor: 'You do not have permission to have the public celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass at the Chapel of Fisher More College.' The diocese later said the earlier permission had been 'ignored and abused'; the college, already failing, did not survive the year. The letter fixed his reputation among traditional Catholics before Traditionis Custodes existed.
His second defining episode came a decade later. In 2023 he opened an investigation of the prioress of the Discalced Carmelite nuns of Arlington and decreed her dismissal; Rome reversed the dismissal in May 2024, the nuns affiliated themselves with the Society of St. Pius X, and in December 2024 the Holy See suppressed the monastery while Olson declared the women 'neither nuns nor Carmelites.' Against that record stands one clear point in his favor: in July 2021 he authorized the Fraternity of St. Peter to continue the old Mass at St. Benedict parish, and it continues.
- 2014-02Twenty-six days after his installation he wrote to Fisher More College withdrawing permission for the public Traditional Latin Mass offered there daily for some three years under his predecessor: 'You do not have permission to have the public celebration of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass at the Chapel of Fisher More College.' The college, already failing financially, did not survive the year. ↗
- 2021-07-25Nine days after Traditionis Custodes he preached at St. Benedict parish and continued his authorization of the 1962 Missal there: 'I continue to authorize the celebration of the Mass in accord with the 1962 Missal of Pope Saint John XXIII at Saint Benedict Parish.' He recorded his finding that the parish 'does not exclude the validity and legitimacy of the liturgical reform, of the dictates of the Second Vatican Council and of the Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiffs', and ruled that other Catholics seeking the sacraments in the older form must have a letter of permission from their pastor and be domiciled within the diocese - the Mass kept, and access to it conditioned. ↗
Few American bishops have a record toward the old Mass as adversarial as Bishop Olson's, and fewer still earned it so early. The defining test is simple — did he protect the ancient Mass or take the knife to it? — and Olson answered it in February 2014, twenty-six days into his episcopate, seven years before Traditionis Custodes gave any bishop cover. He wrote to a small traditional college and shut down a Mass that had been offered there daily, with a letter that reached for 'your own soul' but gave no real liturgical reason. The college, already failing financially, did not survive the year. That act made his name in traditional circles, and it has only hardened since.
The Arlington Carmelite affair is the larger wound. Whatever the truth of the allegation that began it, the effect of his handling was the unmaking of a contemplative community attached to the old rite: an investigation many found disproportionate, a dismissal of the prioress that Rome itself later vacated, and a cascade that ended with the nuns fleeing to the Society of St. Pius X and their monastery declared extinct. A bishop is entitled to govern; but when the governing repeatedly falls hardest on those most attached to Tradition, the pattern speaks.
Honesty requires the one counterweight: under Traditionis Custodes he did not scorch the earth — he let the FSSP's Latin Mass at St. Benedict's continue rather than suppressing it, and that should be said plainly. But a decade's record from Fisher More to the Carmelites runs one direction. Where a traditional institution asserted itself, Olson moved against it. He is, on the evidence, no friend of Tradition.