The Vatican has finally released the juridical document on liturgical abuses, Redemptionis Sacramentum. As expected, it does not contain anything new, but reiterates how we should properly celebrate the sacrament. Diogenes gives us the bullet points:
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No pita or Wonder bread.
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No consecration of carafes of wine.
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No breaking of the host at the consecration
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No intinction (dipping of the host into the chalice) by the communicant
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No jacking around with the words of the Mass
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No substitution of non-Biblical texts for the readings
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No lay homilies
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No splitting up bits of the Eucharist Prayers among non-priests
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Communion on the tongue always to be possible
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Communion in the hand is possible unless there is risk of profanation
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No coffee table liturgies
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Celebrant not to leave the sanctuary during the Sign of Peace
Of course, there’s a lot more to the document, but those are what people will focus on. Of course, this could just end up as more wallpaper, like Ex corde ecclesiae or Liturgiam Authenticam, if bishops don’t actually enforce the rules. After all, this is all in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal already, and that doesn’t stop the abuse.
formed into something even Adoremus can love.
Two MORE words, tt:nos homines
The true value of documents such as these (as well as the Catechism), is that they let ordinary Catholics (like me) challenge and confront wayward and heretical priests. They allow us to stand up for our Catholic ‘rights.’ (You know, the right to have our children taught authentic Catholic morality, to have the mass non-sacrileged, and so forth…) There is something terribly tragic, though, when lay people must be the ones to insist on such.
Time to stick the documents in the faces of the people in our local parish. It is time to confront some Bishops.
If the battle is lost…hello Tridentine.
Dom, You wrote that it “does not contain anything new”. I think it changes some liturgical laws, which I have written about at http://www.romanrite.com/redemptionis.html