Not kneeling when GIRM tells you to

[Joe_5859]

General Instruction of the Roman Missal

It gives official directions concerning how the Mass is to be celebrated. It’s easier to point you to it than to describe it:
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ordinamento-messale_en.html

One caveat: I have found that some parishes and dioceses are better about updating their website than the Vatican is! (The last time I checked, the Vatican had the older version of the Catechism posted, for instance.)

And this is the older version of the GIRM, too. A new version came out not too long ago to go along with the new edition of the Roman Missal we’ll be using in the not too distant future.

The USCCB has the new GIRM on their website:

usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/roman-missal/general-instruction-of-the-roman-missal/.

Personally, I am glad that the Vatican website still has the old versions up. It makes it easy to do comparisons of the old with the new.

 

[EasterJoy]

Personally, I am glad that the Vatican website still has the old versions up. It makes it easy to do comparisons of the old with the new.

In that case, I wish they’d just post both and make it clear which one is current and which one isn’t. I mean, you’d like to think the Vatican posts the currently definitive version.

OTOH, maybe it is not such a horrible thing that there is not an army of fussbudgets staffing the web site of the Holy See!

 

[Joe_5859]

In that case, I wish they’d just post both and make it clear which one is current and which one isn’t. I mean, you’d like to think the Vatican posts the currently definitive version.

OTOH, maybe it is not such a horrible thing that there is not an army of fussbudgets staffing the web site of the Holy See!

That’s how I look at it. I’m pretty sure there are much fewer Type A personalities in the Catholic Church in Europe than here in the U.S.

I take it as an opportunity for myself to grow in patience and be less uptight. I always like to have everything right away (especially when it comes to Church documents ). But most of the time it is simply not necessary. The differences from the first edition of the CCC to the second are not earth-shattering, dogma-reversing changes.

I haven’t really compared and contrasted the editions of the GIRM yet. The only comparison I’ve seen made so far is with paragraph 160.

Old GIRM:

The norm for reception of Holy Communion in the dioceses of the United States is standing. Communicants should not be denied Holy Communion because they kneel. Rather, such instances should be addressed pastorally, by providing the faithful with proper catechesis on the reasons for this norm.

New GIRM:

The norm established for the Dioceses of the United States of America is that Holy Communion is to be received standing, unless an individual member of the faithful wishes to receive Communion while kneeling (Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Instruction, Redemptionis Sacramentum, March 25, 2004, no. 91).

But, while I find these things fascinating, I am not yet sufficiently deluded to think that 95% of my fellow Catholics feel the same way.