I presume this applies universally:
(CWNews.com) - The Vatican plans to remove the Eucharistic Prayers for Children from the authorized prayers of the Roman Missal.
Bishop Arthur Serratelli of Paterson, New Jersey, the chairman of the US bishops' liturgy committee, has disclosed the Vatican plans in a letter to the American bishops. He reported that the Congregation for Divine Worship plans "to publish a separate text at a later time."
The Eucharistic Prayers for Children, like many other liturgical texts, have been criticized for failing to convey an adequate sense of the sacred in the liturgy. In recent years the Vatican has made special efforts to recover that sense of the sacred, and to curtail the proliferation of liturgical texts in order to encourage consistency in the liturgy.
"This does not change our present practice," Bishop Serratelli wrote in his September 29 letter. The change will take effect at an unspecified future date.
However, the US bishops' committee has decided to suspend work on a new translation of the existing Eucharistic Prayers for Children. In light of the coming change, Bishop Serratelli said that he was removing that item from the agenda for the November meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
7 comments:
Deo Gratias. Let's pray that they don't stop at these unncessary Eucharistic Prayers.
I am not a child, a teacher, or a parent, so I have never seen or heard a "children's Eucharistic prayer".
When I was a child, the Mass had only one Eucharistic prayer, the Roman canon.
Before we were old enough to follow the Mass in our hand missals, we children had prayer books, with pictures, to help us follow the Mass, and very good they were, too.
At an early age, we learned to handle a knife and fork. At school, we moved from pencil and crayons to pen and ink. We learned to read and write. It was an essential part of growing up, and I enjoyed it.
It doesn't do to keep children in lead strings for too long. At a Mass specifically for young children, it seems a very good idea to involve the children in the offertory procession, and of course preach to them in simple terms. This is good catechesis. But it certainly doesn't do to concoct kiddies liturgies, or whatever. That's no way to learn about the Mass.
Peter, you are very lucky never to have been subjected to a children's Eucharistic Prayer. I doubt if anyone's heart or mind - child or adult - was ever raised to God by one of them.
When I was five years old, like all Jewish children, I was introduced to having prayers in Hebrew. Unfortunately the teachers and the teaching were not very good but having a new language and a new alphabet were not a problem and become a focus for the religious instruction. Young children learn quickly and a new language is something they take for granted. So there ought not to be any difficulty in getting children used to traditional Latin liturgies, and the experience can do nothing but good to their general level of attainment in all subjects.
"Children's liturgies" are a disaster as they instill the notion that religion is childish and somthing to be grown out of rather than grown into. They are probably an important reason why Catholic education so spectacularly fails to keep young people coming to Mass.
I have to agree with Peter so that saves time and space just repeating what he said so well...
I presume this applies universally
Eccleston Square may say otherwise.
I don't ever remember hearing a CEP (thank goodness)
The whole problem with the CEPs is bringing the Church down, instead of teaching the kids how to go UP to the Church...or my terminology, ascension vs. descension.
In otherwords, the approach has been flipped, and this has caused the change.
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