“Redemptionis Sacramentum” only reiterates norms already existing in the Church.

Vatican City, Apr 22, 2004 / 22:00 pm

During the press conference in which the document "Redemptionis Sacramentum, On Certain Matters To Be Observed Or To Be Avoided Regarding The Most Holy Eucharist” was introduced, Archbishop Sorrentino, secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments, which drafted the document, emphasized that it “does none other than reiterate existing norms.” That is, it is not to be understood as teaching anything essentially new.

The instruction set forth in the document, he added, “should arouse in the
Church a healthy curiosity and a generous welcome, to contemplate with renewed stupor this great mystery of our faith and to give incentives to appropriate Eucharistic behavior and attitudes."

Anticipating some criticisms of the Vatican’s decision to publish the document, Cardinal Francis Arinze, the prefect of the congregation, underscored that the idea that too much time is wasted on dealing with abuses that will always exist, “can lead us into error”, he said. “Abuses are not to be taken lightly."

He added that the abuses that have occurred in the liturgy over the years “have been a motive of anguish for everyone…In some places the perpetration of liturgical abuses has become almost habitual, a fact which obviously cannot be allowed and must cease."

Archbishop Angelo Amato, S.D.B., secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which collaborated on the document, added that celebrating the Mass in an “arbitrary” manner not only "deforms the celebration, but provokes doctrinal insecurity, perplexity and scandal among the people of God."