Mr. Joseph Pope writes with respect to liturgical abuses.

The headline "Vatican halts liturgical abuses" on page 13 of the June issue of Catholic Insight is naive and overly optimistic to the point of absurdity, as any communicant at Toronto's Saint Michael's Cathedral can confirm. Lay people continue to distribute Holy Communion at all Masses there when the ordained clergy are not in need of any assistance. Obviously the celebrant can attend to those communicants without in any way unduly prolonging the mass. In spite of that, two young women are deputed to distribute. They even open the tabernacle to withdraw ciboria and then return them.

The Holy Father calls this a grave abuse, and that it is. During his pontificate he has issued all of four instructions and letters decrying this breach of canon law and calling for it to cease. The latest one is Redemptionis sacramentum (R.S.) mentioned in your article. Not the slightest sign of compliance is to be observed in Toronto. Lay people are required by R.S. to complain to the appropriate authority. Appeals for compliance addressed to the Rector are met with silence, as are those addressed to the Cardinal Archbishop, who, irony of ironies, is a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship that published R.S. in the first place. Cardinal Ambrozic is actually on record as having instructed the Rector to instruct lay people to distribute Holy Communion. One is then required by R.S. to report the breach to Cardinal Arinze, the Prefect of the Congregation. Thus we have the anomaly of reporting to the Prefect the schismatic disobedience of a member of his very own Congregation.

Toronto, ON