The norms for celebrating Mass must be followed exactly to ensure reverence for the Eucharist and to preserve the unity of the Catholic Church, according to a new Vatican document released on Friday.
“In some places the perpetration of liturgical abuses has become almost habitual, a fact which obviously cannot be allowed and must cease,” said the document, “Redemptionis Sacramentum” (“The Sacrament of Redemption”), written by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments.
The instruction, approved by Pope John Paul II and released at a Vatican press conference on Friday, particularly cited as abuses the use of eucharistic prayers not approved by the church, changing approved prayer texts, and allowing lay people to carry out functions reserved to a priest or deacon.
The document said that while it was “laudable” to encourage boys and young men to be altar servers, girls and women can be altar servers if the local bishop permitted the practice.
Congregation prefect Cardinal Francis Arinze (pictured) told reporters: “The eucharistic norms were elaborated to express and safeguard the eucharistic mystery and, even more, to demonstrate that it is the church which celebrates this august sacrifice and sacrament.”
The norms reaffirm church teaching that a Catholic, in a situation of serious sin, must go to confession before approaching the Eucharist.
Cardinal Arinze refused to answer a direct question about whether US Senator and likely presidential candidate John Kerry should be denied Communion unless he goes to confession and repents for his position of support for legalised abortion.
“The norm of the church is clear,” he said. “The church exists in the United States. There are bishops there, let them interpret it.”
However, when asked more generally if a priest should refuse Communion to a politician who supports abortion, Cardinal Arinze said, “Yes.”
source: Cathnews
