archives

[Editor's note: John Allen will be filing daily reports during the Nov. 12-15 fall meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, Maryland. The reports will be available beginning Monday here: http://ncrcafe.org/blog/2682.]

Inevitably, the election of Cardinal Francis George as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops next week will invite comparison to the era of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the man George followed in Chicago, and a driving force in the American bishops' conference for the better part of three decades.

Here's the editorial from the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet

Celebration of the Eucharist is at the heart of Catholic identity, to the extent that regular attendance at Mass usually defines who is and who is not entitled to call themselves by that name. This may be why liturgical controversy in the Church sometimes takes on a hard and bitter edge. The latest display of ill feeling has been triggered by the somewhat unenthusiastic welcome in some parts of the Church given to Pope Benedict's motu proprio of last July, licensing the more general use of the Tridentine Rite. Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship at the Vatican, this week accused bishops who were trying to limit use of the Tridentine Mass of being "in rebellion against the Pope" and guilty of "one of the gravest sins" - pride. Certain "theologians, liturgists, priests, bishops and even cardinals" had issued "interpretative documents that inexplicably try to limit the Pope's motu proprio", he complained.