Bishops to vote on new directory, norms for liturgical music

Published: 2006-10-24

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- To ensure that the hymns used at Mass are "doctrinally correct" and based on Scripture and liturgical texts, the U.S. bishops will debate and vote on a new directory for music and the liturgy at their Nov. 13-16 meeting in Baltimore. Each bishops' conference around the world was directed to draw up such a directory within five years after the 2001 Vatican instruction "Liturgiam Authenticam" ("The Authentic Liturgy"). Within another three years, the bishops' Committee on the Liturgy is to propose a common repertoire of liturgical songs for all Latin-rite Masses celebrated in the United States. The directory is intended to serve "not so much as a list of approved and unapproved songs as a process by which bishops might regulate the quality of the text of songs composed for use in the liturgy," said Bishop Donald W. Trautman of Erie, Pa., chairman of the bishops' Committee on the Liturgy, in an introduction to the document. If approved by two-thirds of the bishops, the directory and norms would be sent to the Vatican for its assent.

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