London, England, Nov 23, 2007 / 07:57 am
A Vatican official has criticized some bishops' actions as prejudiced and proud for obstructing Pope Benedict XVI's recent reform liberalizing the use of the Tridentine Mass.
Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments blasted as "disobedience" the reaction of many bishops to the Pope's motu proprio document Summorum Pontificum, which lifted the restrictions of the older "extraordinary rite" of the Mass.
The document instructs bishops that priests who wish to follow the older rite must be allowed to do so without asking permission, and says that congregations who request the Tridentine Mass must be provided it.
Archbishop Ranjith decried the action "and even rebellion" of many bishops who are trying to limit access to the older Mass. “On the part of some dioceses, there have been interpretive documents that inexplicably aim to limit the ‘motu proprio’ of the pope,” he said earlier this month.