Click Here to take our brief survey
It’s amazing how people jump to conclusions regarding conferences that offer suggestions to the Pope. This is from today’s National Catholic Reporter.
VATICAN CITY — A Vatican spokesman downplayed a report that major liturgical reforms are being considered by Pope Benedict XVI.
“At the moment, there are no institutional proposals for a modification of the liturgical books currently in use,” the spokesman, Father Ciro Benedettini, said Aug. 24.
He was responding to a report that a document with proposed liturgical modifications, including a curb on the practice of receiving Communion in the hand, had been sent to the pope last April by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.
The article, published by the newspaper Il Giornale, said the document was a first concrete step toward the “reform of the reform” in liturgy planned by Pope Benedict. It said the congregation proposed to promote a greater sense of the sacred in liturgy, recover the use of the Latin language in celebrations, and reformulate introductive parts of the Roman Missal to end abuses and experimentation.
The article said the worship congregation had voted on and approved the recommendations almost unanimously during its plenary session last March.
Vatican sources told Catholic News Service that the worship congregation did not, in fact, suggest a program of liturgical change, but simply forwarded to the pope some considerations from its discussions focusing on eucharistic adoration, the theme of the plenary session.
Some individual members may have added opinions on other liturgical issues, but they in no way constituted formal proposals, one source said.
Read the rest here. I wonder why people love stirring this pot? I’d like to take a poll of the 150 or so of you who regularly view these pages here. How many here would like Mass to be in Latin? How many want the priest to face away from the people during mass? How many people want to not have the option of receiving the Eucharist in their hands?
OK those are three easy questions. Click Here to take survey
Now let’s ask three more:
How many here wish their Sunday preaching was more interesting and engaging? How many here wish that music in their church was actually singable? How many wish that people were actually engaged in parish life and that it became more than a place to go to mass for one hour each week?