Vatican Flags Liturgical Extremism on Kneeling, Veils
After the Panama ad limina, the Dicastery said the Eucharist cannot become an object of opposition and urged a directory for uniform celebrations.
The Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has published a review of its Oct. 21 meeting with the bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Panama during their ad limina visit. The note, posted online, warns of “the danger of extremisms in the liturgical sphere and of the instrumentalization of the Eucharistic celebration.”
The note says certain groups of the faithful raise questions such as receiving Communion kneeling or in the hand, and women’s use of the veil. Such groups, the dicastery states, “tend to foster division and confusion.” It adds that “the Eucharist is the sacrament of unity and cannot become an object of opposition.” The note does not name the groups, does not say who raised the questions, and does not spell out what the alleged instrumentalization consists of.
Pastoral concerns from Panama
The Panamanian bishops also reported practices in Eucharistic adoration they judged to be incorrect—too individualized and detached from the Mass—and a tendency to lengthen celebrations with added gestures, prayers, and responses that “compromise the sobriety proper to the Roman Rite.” On sacred music, the review calls for clear criteria, the avoidance of individualism, mere emotion, or local folklore, and lyrics that are doctrinally sound.
The note further mentions “parallel information circulating through blogs and opinions of various kinds,” stresses the need for a liturgical-pastoral directory to secure uniform celebrations, and addresses Sunday celebrations without a priest, Delegates of the Word, marriage preparation to be shielded from commercial logic, confession threatened by individualism and psychologism, and the procedure for adopting Missal translations already approved by other episcopal conferences.
Communion discipline already in force
Church norms already regulate the manner of receiving Holy Communion. Redemptionis Sacramentum (2004) provides that the faithful receive kneeling or standing as the episcopal conference determines; that Communion may not be refused solely because a person wishes to kneel or stand; and that every member of the faithful has the right to choose to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, with Communion in the hand permitted where the conference has so authorized with confirmation from the Holy See. The dicastery’s Panama note does not cite those norms.
Defenders of traditional practice say the manner of receiving Communion remains a legitimate question of reverence rooted in the long custom of Communion on the tongue and kneeling. The note’s language on “extremisms” arrives amid wider tension over liturgical discipline, including public criticism of Cardinal Arthur Roche’s handling of the Traditional Roman Rite and restrictions that recently prevented a traditional pilgrimage from entering St. Peter’s in procession.
The dicastery, headed by Cardinal Roche, frames its counsel as a call to unity around the Eucharist rather than a detailed juridical change. The Panama exchange underscores Rome’s insistence that legitimate diversity of gesture not harden into partisan markers that obscure the sacrament’s nature as the bond of ecclesial communion.