The Vatican has issued further restrictions on the pre-Vatican II Mass, ruling ordinations and confirmations are banned while emphasising new priests must receive Holy See “authorisation” to celebrate the Latin Mass. Source: The Tablet.
The new guidelines, released in a question-and-answer format, heavily restrict the celebration of all the other sacraments in the old rite and stress that no priest should celebrate more than one traditional Latin Mass in a day. They also state that any priest refusing to concelebrate Mass with his fellow clergy cannot use the old rite.
Pope Francis has said the reforms to Catholic worship which took place following the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council are “irreversible”, and in July issued the ruling Traditionis Custodes, that re-imposed restrictions on the unreformed liturgy.
The Holy See’s policy on the old rite is that it can be celebrated as an exceptional concession, but cannot be presented as an alternative, or superior, form of the liturgy. The issue is less about the use of Latin, but the support of a pre-Vatican II vision of the Church
The latest guidelines, issued by Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, are designed to help bishops across the world implement Francis’ document.
The guidelines will prevent a priest from offering sacraments in the old rite without permission, and therefore preventing the implementation of the traditional liturgy by stealth.
Only “canonically erected personal parishes” with permission to use the older liturgy, they say, can offer the sacraments of baptism, confession, marriage and anointing of the sick. The scripture readings in celebrations of the old rite must be said in local languages and cannot “reproduce the cycle of readings of the previous rite.”
FULL STORY
Vatican lays down the law on the Old Rite (By Christopher Lamb, The Tablet)
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