David Ancell / Sunday August 08, 2004
Lately, I’ve been listening to some audio CDs on Redemtionis Sacramentum. One audio series that I’ve used is by Fr. Peter Stravinskas. The other is one that I got by donating to the Catholic Resource Center.As I’ve said before, I hope that they enforce this one. What gives me hope is the fact that stronger language is being used in the document that in others. Certain practices are to be “reprobated.” Others are listed as graviora delicta resulting in automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See (e.g. pouring the precious blood down the sacrarium).
It occured to me after my last post that one might argue that we wouldn’t need these documents if we went back to the Tridintine Mass. It seems there were more problems with the current rite. However, this is probably not true. There were certainly liturgical abuses in the old rite, but they were more difficult to detect because the Liturgy was celebrated in Latin. Fr. Stravinskas recalls as an altar server hearing priests leave out parts of what we now call the Eucharistic Prayer. Many of the complaints leading to this document came from laity. Now that the Mass is celebrated in the vernacular, any lay person can tell whether or not the rite is being celebrated correctly.
To make things more interesting, the document repeatedly assert the right of the faithful to a properly celebrated Mass. I wonder how many times that right has been denied us by those who would “empower” the laity and who complained that the laity had no voice in the affairs of the Church. After all, we know there are those circles in which those faithful to the Magisterium do not count as “laity.”
Category: Posts imported from Danger! Falling Brainwaves, Uncategorized
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