As our friend David Gibson reported last week, the Catholic bishop of Tulsa has announced that priests celebrating Mass in his cathedral must henceforth do so facing the altar in the pre-Vatican II style.
Now a respected Italian journalist reports that the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship (where American Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia was recently named to the number-two spot) has proposed further traditionalist reforms, including an end to receiving Communion in the hand.
A Vatican spokesman has denied any “institutional proposals” along these lines, but ever since Pope Benedict lifted restrictons on the Traditional Latin Mass two years ago, informed observers have been predicting a “reform of the reform” that produced the kind of worship most Catholics follow today.