On the institutionalization of abuse in the Novus Ordo Mass

On April 23, 2004, the Vatican released its latest Instruction on the Eucharist, Redemptionis Sacramentum, an Instruction on certain matters to be observed or to be avoided regarding the Most Holy Eucharist. The Adoremus Bulletin, which reprinted the entire Instruction in it's Special Documentary Edition of July-August, 2004, called it "unprecedented and highly important." My question, however, is whether we have not reached a point of such gaping discrepancies between word and deed that it must be asked seriously whether any such instruction from the Vatican can be taken seriously. When abuses themselves have come to seem so normal that they have been accepted, and when the accepted has been taken to be acceptable, then that which is inherently defective -- viz., abuse -- has become institutinalized. This is what I take to have happened as a fait accompli in the Novus Ordo Mass.

I offer an extended analysis (here) of several abuses, including the illicit use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (an abuse addressed in Redemptionis Sacramentum), Communion in the hand, etc. More importantly, I point out how the seemingly benign nature of these abuses conceals a larger and much more serious problem in the nature of the Novus Ordo Mass itself -- a problem that can only be addressed by examining features of its development. Read more ...