BOSTON AUXILIARY bishop says celebrating the traditional Latin Mass was an overwhelming experience. “In offering the Traditional Mass for the first time, after removing the vestments, I knelt in the back pew and wept,” Bishop Robert Reed tweeted. Bishop Reed, 66, is president of the local CatholicTV Network headquartered in Watertown. As of 4 July 2025, Bishop Reed’s post on Twitter has garnered more than 188,800 views.
Perspective • With regard to the Novus Ordo, our organization believes the pope does have the authority to authorize new rites. At the same time, we look with deep suspicion upon those who have contempt for Catholic tradition and despise anything that came before 1963. Pope Benedict XVI put it best:
“A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent.”
Catholics must reject an idea which is gaining traction on the internet: viz. that Catholics aren’t obliged to obey legitimate authority, or that they can “pick and choose” which items they will obey and which items they will disobey. (However, Catholics aren’t obliged to obey a superior telling them to commit sin.) Obedience is often exceedingly difficult, because through obedience we give our will to God. In certain places, there are ‘independent’ bishops1 who end up—in a certain sense—no better than protestants. May God preserve all of us from the sin of disobedience; may it be so.
1 There are also ‘independent’ priests whose only superior is themselves.
