PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (LifeSiteNews) — An American bishop known for defending doctrine has praised Catholics who attend the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) and asked that they be supported in the name of Church unity.
“In this Week of Prayer for #ChristianUnity, let’s also work to safeguard and promote ‘Catholic Unity’,” tweeted Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Diocese of Providence in Rhode Island.
“In particular, let’s resolve to respect and support members of our own Church who are devoted to TLM. They are faithful Catholics who greatly love the Lord and his Church.”
In this Week of Prayer for #ChristianUnity, let’s also work to safeguard and promote “Catholic Unity.” In particular, let’s resolve to respect and support members of our own Church who are devoted to TLM. They are faithful Catholics who greatly love the Lord and his Church.
— Bishop Thomas Tobin (@ThomasJTobin1) January 18, 2022
While the response to this tweet was overwhelmingly positive, and included praise from Father John Zuhlsdorf — “May God reward you!” — a few critics accused Latin Mass Catholics of “attacking” or “reject[ing]” the pope.
Tobin is familiar with the power of the TLM to galvanize Catholics, as he helped revitalize a wilting parish in 2018 by asking the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), who celebrate only the TLM to take it over. Catholics then flocked to the church from all over New England to attend the old rite.
The bishop’s statement that supporting Latin Mass Catholics is in service of unity in the Church contradicts assertions, echoed in a recent papal document, that Catholics who are attached to the traditional rite are divisive.
In the letter to the world’s bishops accompanying his motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis said that the post-Vatican II permissions to freely say the Latin Mass were “exploited” to “widen the gaps … that injure the Church” and “expose her to the peril of division.”
The pontiff also speaks in this letter of a “comportment” of Latin Mass-goers “that contradicts communion and nurtures the divisive tendency.”
However, many commentators, among them papal biographer George Weigel, have observed that attempts to restrict and suppress the Latin Mass, most notably through Traditionis Custodes and the Responsa Ad Dubia meant to accompany it, are themselves deeply divisive.
Weigel called Traditionis Custodes “theologically incoherent, pastorally divisive, unnecessary,” and “cruel.”
This perspective is shared by Daily Wire commentator and practicing Catholic Matt Walsh. Walsh believes that the rationale given for the Responsa limiting access to the TLM — that “this is all about unity in the church” — is “dishonest at best.”
“While they say that [the restrictions are] about unity and not division, they’re actually creating more division,” Walsh said shortly after the release of the Responsa in December. Walsh even called the documents’ suppression of the TLM a “divide and conquer strategy” released under the guise of “unity.”
Bishop Thomas Tobin should not be confused with Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey.