New rules on the Holy Eucharist on Holy Thursday

Catholic Herald ^ | 03/15/2004 | Luke Coppen

[lrslattery]

The Vatican will publish strict new norms on the Eucharist next month, permanently changing the way Mass is celebrated throughout the world.

The Pope has authorised the publication of the norms on Holy Thursday, April 8, a year after his landmark encyclical on the Eucharist.

The final draft of the document, which is now being translated from Latin, will be a carefully edited version of the draft text leaked last September. The draft, which discouraged the reception of communion in both kinds and limited the role of altar girls, provoked an angry reaction from bishops in the English-speaking world.

After intensive episcopal lobbying, the Vatican is understood to have simplified the document and moderated some of the more controversial proscriptions.

The Catholic Herald has learned that the new norms will address some of the most divisive liturgical issues in the Catholic Church today. A source close to the Vatican said the document was part of a drive to "solemnise" the celebration of Mass and to counter a perceived lack of reverence for the Eucharist among Catholics.

It is also likely to challenge the view that the Second Vatican Council gave local bishops the authority to adapt the liturgy. It will also emphasise that Rome must guarantee the universality of the Mass.

[GirlShortstop]

  *..believe in anything, he/she/it must believe...*

No, no no. The universal PC pronoun goes like this; women first, then men, then inanimate objects: s/h/it

teeheehee  :-)

[Desdemona]

Vatican II clearly relaxed standards within the Church which permitted the sex abuse scandals to occur. If you check the statistics, you will see that while a great many of the clerics were ordained before the Council, most of the cases of abuse occurred AFTER the Council.

You think that VII was all there was to it? No, secular creeping or anything else had to do with it? Like, maybe the teaching had already gotten lax in places? Or, that this sort of thing had been happening for a long time and had been kept VERY quiet.

[Maximilian]

I came here to argue against the Amchurch heretics and ireverent wackos. Why are my brother traditionalists picking fights with me? This sucks.

It sounds like you're saying that you came here to teach, not to learn. But isn't it always better to learn? This is a discussion board, so you have to expect the arguments to go both ways. Rather than "fights" that "suck," think of it as an unexpected bonus of participating in FR.

[Maximilian]

sigh of relief

Don't sigh with relief if it's because you believe that VII did not give the local bishops authority to adapt the liturgy. It did give them exactly that authority. Try this paragraph from Sacrosanctum Concilium:

39. Within the limits set by the typical editions of the liturgical books, it shall be for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2, to specify adaptations, especially in the case of the administration of the sacraments, the sacramentals, processions, liturgical language, sacred music, and the arts, but according to the fundamental norms laid down in this Constitution.

The reality we have seen since Vatican II is these so-called "fundamental norms" have not prevented any and every adaptation that the bishops wanted. After all, they are given carte blanche authority to make whatever adaptations they want in every aspect of the liturgy, and they police themselves as far as deciding whether these adaptations are "according to the fundamental norms."

[rogator]

"At any rate, I go to a Holy Latin Mass,..."

Where do you find a Latin Mass in Tucson?

[ultima ratio]

Yes, I do believe it was Vatican II, most definitely. Some of the behavior of priests and seminarians--and nuns--was inconceivable before the Council. You fail to understand the completeness of the revolution, how old restraints were discarded, how worldliness was courted deliberately. Seminarians today have almost no interior prayer life to speak of; daily Mass is optional; they are embedded on college campuses and mingle with other students freely; they watch t.v., attend movies, go out to party, and cruise the bars. This is a far cry from the monastic training in prayer and asceticism which had been the rule before the Council. It's true a lot of offending priests were the product of the old training--but they would be the first to admit it was the atmosphere of license that prevailed following Vatican II--not to speak of the growing theological acceptance of homosexuality in many quarters within the new Church--that released their darkest inhibitions.

[ultima ratio]

"These two statements need explanation and clarification.."

Popes are infallible only when speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals. That is to say, they are protected from error only when making a clear definition, properly promulgated on everybody, on matters pertaining to the deposit of faith. Popes are never infallible when speaking on anything NEW. Vatican I, canon 3, states: "For the Holy Spirit was not given so that by His revelation the Successors of Peter may disclose new doctrine." It is only given to PROTECT traditional doctrines which the popes have received.

Popes have, in the past, been heretical. John XXII, for instance, repented his own heretical teaching on his own deathbed. He had taught, wrongly, that we will achieve life after death only after the Last Day when our bodies are resurrected. This was false and out of line with what the Church had always taught about the soul's survival immediately after death.

[ArrogantBustard]

"heritage music"????

Whazzat? Music composed before Michael Joncas, Marty Haugen, David Haas, and their merry band of savages was unleashed on an unsuspecting Church?

[ArrogantBustard]

And, to our Catholic friends, leaving the service before it ends is very wrong.

I think most of us on this forum know that. I dare say most of us on this forum do not consider being compared to Judas Iscariot to be a compliment. Perhaps your view is different, but I seriously doubt it.

[Pyro7480]

This is a heresy in itself.

This is a historical fact. There have been legitimately-elected popes who sympathized with heresies in the past. Why do you think St. Athanasius was "forced" to be disobedient in defense of orthodoxy?

[Fast Ed97]

Check out the new Catholic Liturgy- The website calls this "Liturgical Leaders in Motion" www.stalphonsusrock.org

[Pyro7480]

Words fail me...

[Desdemona]

Please, don't use the Rock church as an example. It's one parish on the North side of St. Louis and it's one of a kind. They don't do that stuff anywhere else here. Well, maybe St. Cronin.

A friend of my mother's went to a Baptism there of one of her grandchildern (this woman was black) and she said she wasn't sure it was a Catholic church, God rest her soul

[Fast Ed97]

It is a Catholic Parish run by the Redemptorists. The Redemptorists are a religious congregation of men founded in 1732 by Saint Alphonsus Liguori. Their mission is to spread the Gospel to the poor and most abandoned. They began this work among the poor and forgotten shepherds living in the hill country surrounding Naples, in southern Italy. Even if it is one parish- it should not be done.

[Desdemona]

I'm not disagreeing with you, just stating that it's not as prevailant as might be implied.

[ultima ratio]

Where has it ever been Church doctrine that a pope cannot be a heretic? This is nonsense. Of course popes can turn to heresy--and have!

[ultima ratio]

The sentimentality you express is not helpful. You need to be more knowledgable and less emotional. First, popes CAN be heretical, and have been. Second, nobody has driven me away from anything. I am still a Catholic in good standing. I choose to attend Mass at an SSPX chapel, that's all--and this is permitted. If you had more knowledge than you evidence, you would realize this.

[kstewskis]

After all, they are given carte blanche authority to make whatever adaptations they want in every aspect of the liturgy, and they police themselves as far as deciding whether these adaptations are "according to the fundamental norms."

I see.

So it can be left to subjective whims then, as long as they follow what is written in the Cathechism.

Which seems to me, wide as the Grand Canyon, no?