Sunday, August 30, 2009

Vatican prepares vast reforms of the ways the Mass is celebrated - Catholic Herald reports - click to read

...The Vatican has proposed sweeping reforms to the way Mass is celebrated, it has been claimed.

Communion on the tongue, Consecration celebrated ad orientem (facing east) and renewed use of Latin could all be re-introduced to ordinary Sunday Masses as part of proposals put forward by the Congregation for Divine Worship.

Andrea Tornielli, a senior Vatican watcher, reported last week that the congregation's cardinals and bishops voted "almost unanimously in favour of greater sacrality of the Rite" at a plenary meeting in March.

Members of the congregation are said to have put forward 30 propositiones ("propositions") aimed at reforming the way in which the Novus Ordo has been celebrated since the Second Vatican Council.

These set out to recover a "sense of Eucharistic worship", the use of the "Latin language in the celebration" and include the "remaking of the introductory parts of the Missal in order to put a stop to liturgical abuses".

According to Mr Tornielli the propositions, which were voted on by the congregation on March 21, also include placing renewed emphasis on receiving Communion on the tongue "according to the norms"....