Visiting cardinal discusses changes in Mass
Sept 17, 2007
To encourage Catholics to apply their faith in daily life, the Vatican is considering alternative endings to the priest's last line of the Mass: "The Mass is ended. Go in peace."
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 15, 2007) "Many people, when they hear, 'Go, the Mass is ended,' think that what we are saying is, 'It is finished, you can go and rest,'" said Cardinal Francis Arinze, who heads the Vatican's office on liturgy and sacraments. He spoke Thursday night to 120 people at LeMont Restaurant on Mount Washington, during a benefit for the Apostolate for Family Consecration, an Ohio ministry where he spends part of each summer.
After the Synod for the Eucharist in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI asked Cardinal Arinze's office to consider optional closing words. So far he has received more than 70 suggestions, he said.
Examples include "Go and live what we have celebrated" and "We have celebrated the good news of Christ, go and share this with your brethren," he said.
At the dinner the apostolate presented its highest award to a popular priest from this region, the Rev. Michael Scanlan, chancellor of the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Father Scanlan, a Harvard Law School graduate who later became a Franciscan, revitalized the Steubenville campus when it was near bankruptcy, making it a center of the Catholic charismatic movement.
In brief remarks Thursday, he stressed that the university is no longer exclusively identified with the charismatic movement, which stresses supernatural gifts such as speaking in tongues and healing.
"We are inclusive," he said. "What the church loves, we love."
When people ask him if he's conservative, "I've said I'm liberal in matters where Pope John Paul II is liberal and I'm conservative in matters where Pope John Paul II is conservative. I'm following the church," he said.
Visiting cardinal discusses changes in Mass