AFAIK, nothing since has clarified that.
This is an overview of the CCCB document on the subject.
From:
adoremus.org/1103ChildrenLiturgy.html
What Have We Done to Our Children?
How Catholic children became guinea-pigs for liturgical experiments
Part I of Three-part series
by Susan Benofy
The ink was barely dry on the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy when reformers began experimenting with their most radical innovations – from freely altering texts to ritual dance – not on consenting adults, but on the unsuspecting school children who would become “Generation X”.
Susan Benofy, research editor of the Adoremus Bulletin, reviews the development of these ideas as they are reflected in the principal documents of the period, the 1973 Directory for Masses with Children (DMC), the special Eucharistic Prayers for children, and the more recent “Children’s Lectionary”, in this three-part series.
Links to Part II | Part III
adoremus.org/1203ChildrenLiturgy.html
adoremus.org/0204ChildrenLiturgy.html
Part I
The Directory for Masses with Children
“I am most interested of all in the future of our little children”, wrote Bishop Robert Tracy of Baton Rouge in his 1966 memoir of the Second Vatican Council.
“A baby who is now two years old will be ten years old within eight short years… All the services of the Church will have been meaningful to that child from the start, and further the child will have been trained in religion classes to a dynamic understanding of his mission in life to project the Presence of Christ into his community”, enthused the bishop.
“Is that child going to be any better than his ancestors were? Who can say? But one thing is sure: thanks to the Council, he is going to have many more opportunities for meaningful religion than they ever had!”
Bishop Tracy made this prediction in his memoir, American Bishop at the Vatican Council (p. 70). It is typical of the sort of liturgical optimism that prevailed in those heady days.
But the “meaningful religion” and “dynamic understanding” the bishop expected for children born at the close of the Council – children who are now 40 years old – did not happen as he anticipated.
Children continued to be restless at Mass; teens still complained of boredom. And that has not changed. The quest for “meaningful” Masses, pursued so hotly in the late 1960s, did not bear the expected fruit. However, that failure did not then – and has not now – stopped the “do-it-yourself” mode the liturgical experts of the 1960s promoted.
Special liturgies for children used readings, prayers and other practices different from those used at ordinary (“adult”) Masses – and still do. Despite the less-than-spectacular success, many parishes today have special children’s or “family” Masses on most Sundays, offer “teen” Masses, as well as Masses for school children on weekdays.
From the distance of three decades, it is by now clear that children’s “needs” were often used as an excuse for breaking the rules. Innovations were said to make Mass “meaningful” for young children. Eliminating the Gloria or skipping the confiteor, changing, omitting or dramatizing Scripture readings, “homilies” by non-priests, adding new “tropes” to the Lamb of God, inventing “memorial acclamations”, performing “liturgical dance” – all these have their genesis in the flexibility liturgists demanded years ago in order to adapt Masses for children.
Are separate liturgies for children a good idea? Does the Church actually permit different liturgies for children?
Should it? If so, how much license to change the Mass is permitted? An evaluation of the past three decades of experience with special Masses for children for is long overdue.
We can start by reviewing the official documents that govern children’s Masses: 1) Directory for Masses With Children (DMC - 1973); 2) the Eucharistic Prayers for Masses with Children (1974), and 3) the Lectionary for Masses with Children (LMC * 1991)
The Directory for Masses with Children was issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW) on November 1, 1973. It led to the creation of the Eucharistic Prayers for Masses with Children, and, ultimately to a separate Lectionary for Masses with Children.
DMC 52 says that one of the four Eucharistic Prayers from the Missal is to be used “until the Apostolic See makes other provisions for Masses with children”. Pope Paul VI began to make such provisions immediately. His approval of the DMC was accompanied by authorization for the CDW to draw up two or three Eucharistic Prayers for children for use by the entire Church. Three Eucharistic Prayers for Masses with Children were approved on November 1, 1974.
DMC 43 suggests that the Lectionary may be adapted to children, but it left the details for producing it to the national conferences of bishops. In 1991, the US bishops approved a Lectionary for Masses with Children, along with an accompanying Introduction.
What do these documents permit in liturgies with children? How do they fit in with the liturgical reform following the Council?
The Children’s Mass Project
After the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), appeared in 1963, the reform of the rites was entrusted to a group known as the Consilium (council) for the Implementation of the Liturgical Reform. Members of this body were bishops, and a large group of experts were appointed as advisors. Its work was assigned to several committees of experts. One of the most influential of these was the committee on revisions of the Order of Mass, known as Coetus X (Group 10). (Later the Consilium would be incorporated into the Congregation for Divine Worship, and its experts became consulters of the CDW.)
Many of the liturgical experts of Coetus X advocated simplifying the basic structure of the Mass while also allowing variations to be made by any priest-celebrant. As the liturgical reform progressed, it became clear that the new rite would not be as “flexible” as the liturgists had hoped – so more and more liturgists demanded adaptations for special groups, including children. Some just made changes on their own authority, as Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, Secretary of the Consilium and later of the CDW, recalls in his history The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948-1975:
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