In U.S. talk, top Vatican liturgy official criticizes liturgical abuses

Published: 2003-10-15

SAN ANTONIO (CNS) -- The Vatican's chief liturgy official sharply criticized unauthorized liturgical innovations in a speech Oct. 8 in San Antonio. "Some people seem to think that inculturation in the liturgy encourages free and uncontrolled creativity," said Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments. "The truth is that genuine inculturation has nothing to do with the product of the over-fertile imagination of an enthusiastic priest who concocts something on Saturday night and inflicts it on the innocent Sunday morning congregation now being used as a guinea pig," he said. Cardinal Arinze was a keynote speaker at the Oct. 7-11 national meeting of the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions. This year's meeting focused on the 40 years of liturgical renewal since the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy ("Sacrosanctum Concilium"), the Second Vatican Council's 1963 document on the liturgy.

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