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The bishops’ call for adherence to Catholic “rules” follows an internet controversy over a August 2022 video of a laywoman who seemed to concelebrate Mass with priests. / Katholisches Medienzentrum YouTube screenshot

Denver, Colo., Jan 12, 2023 / 10:10 am (CNA).

Only ordained priests may preside at Mass, and the liturgy should not be “a testing ground for personal projects,” three Swiss bishops have said. Their intervention follows internet controversy over a video of a laywoman who seemed to concelebrate Mass with priests.

“You all know that only the priest validly presides at the Eucharist, grants sacramental reconciliation, and anoints the sick. This is precisely why he is ordained. This rule of the Roman Catholic faith must be respected without restriction in our dioceses,” Bishops Joseph Bonnemain of Chur, Felix Gmür of Basel, and Markus Büchel of Sankt Gallen said in a Jan. 5 letter to people active in pastoral care, the French Catholic newspaper La Croix reported.

Their three dioceses are the predominantly German-speaking dioceses of Switzerland.

The bishops acknowledged people’s desire to participate in the liturgy but said the Catholic liturgy has a universal character, and this especially concerns celebrations of the sacraments.

“Common witness requires common forms and rules. We bishops regularly receive requests and worried reactions: the faithful have a right to religious services that respect the rules and forms of the Church,” their letter said.

Their letter came after controversy over an August 2022 Mass in the Diocese of Chur at which a longtime de facto parish administrator, Zurich resident Monika Schmid, appeared to concelebrate the Eucharist to mark her retirement.

Bishop Bonnemain quickly opened a preliminary canonical investigation into the action on the grounds of alleged liturgical abuse. Canon 907 of the Catholic Church’s canon law bars Catholic deacons and Catholic laity from offering the eucharistic prayer and from performing actions “proper to the celebrating priest.”

Schmid has denied her actions constituted an attempt to concelebrate Mass or to be provocative, the Swiss Catholic internet news portal Cath.ch reported. Schmid acknowledged that as a woman she can’t validly celebrate the Eucharist as ordained Catholic priests do. She said the controversy was based on a video clip uploaded to the internet without the knowledge of all the participants.

“And some are already seeing red when they see a woman at the altar in a photo,” she said.

According to Cath.ch, the video of the Mass “clearly shows her, in civilian clothes, at the altar, surrounded by two priests and pronouncing with them, extending her arms, the text of the consecration of bread and wine and of the eucharistic prayer.”

The text of the eucharistic prayer had been “extensively revised,” La Croix reported in September.

In their letter, the bishops of German-speaking Switzerland said they are aware that some have argued that women participate in the liturgy.

“We hear the requests of many people to be able to participate in the liturgy in other ways, for example as women,” they said. “However, we urge you to not make the sign of unity that is the liturgy into a testing ground for personal projects. It is precisely in the worldwide celebration of the same liturgy that we are Catholic and in solidarity with one another.”

The bishops rejected any claim that they were defending “patriarchal clericalism.” Rather, they said, “priests, in the service and execution of the sacraments, make visible that Jesus Christ himself acts in and through the sacraments.” Priests “keep open, as it were, space for God’s action in the liturgy.”

Schmid, the pastoral worker whose retirement Mass sparked the controversy, was critical of the bishops’ letter. She advocated a liturgical celebration that, in her view, “reaches out to people in their daily lives, in their language and in their understanding of themselves,” Cath.ch reported.

The bishops referred to Pope Francis’ June 2022 apostolic letter Desiderio desideravi. It insists on the quality of liturgies, the careful attention to every aspect of liturgical celebration, and the observance of every rubric.

According to La Croix, the German bishops invited Catholics to use “the diversity of forms for liturgical celebrations that the Church offers … and to use places in the liturgy, such as reflection, preaching, meditation, intercessions, songs, music, and silence, so that you can be part of it personally.”

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Vatican City, Dec 3, 2017 / 04:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis kicked off the Church’s Advent season saying it is a time to let go of the worldly distractions that take us away from God, and focus on growing closer to him through prayer and concern for others.  

Referring to the day’s readings, which stress the importance of being vigilant, the Pope said “the watchful person is one who, in the noise of the world, does not let themselves be overwhelmed by distraction or superficiality, but lives in a full and conscious way, with a concern above all for others.”

With this attitude, we quickly become aware “of the tears and necessity of our neighbor and we can also welcome the human and spiritual qualities and capacities,” he said, adding that an attentive person, “also turns to the world, trying to counteract indifference and the cruelty of it, rejoicing in the treasures of beauty that also exist and must be preserved.”

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his Angelus address, which took place on the first Sunday of Advent.

He focused his address on the day’s Gospel reading from Mark, in which Jesus tells his disciples to “Be watchful! Be alert!,” because “you do not know when the time will come.”

Advent, he said, is a time given to us “to welcome the Lord who comes to meet us, to verify our desire for God, to look ahead and prepare ourselves for the return of Christ.”

Christ will return again at Christmas, when we remember how he came to us “in the humility of the human condition.” However, Christ also comes to each of us “every time we are disposed to receive him,” Francis said, and “he will come again at the end of time to judge the living and the dead.”

“Because of this, we must always be watchful and attentive to the Lord with the hope of meeting him.”

Turning to the Gospel, when Jesus urges his disciples, and each of us, to “be watchful and alert,” Francis said the person who is vigilant and alert is the one “who welcomes the invitation to watch, that is, not to let themselves be overwhelmed by the sleep of discouragement, the lack of hope, or by delusions.”

At the same time, this person also rejects “the solicitation of the vanities of which the world overflows and behind which, at times, personal and familiar serenity are sacrificed.”

Pope Francis then turned to the day’s first reading from the Book of Isaiah, in which the prophet described how for the people of Israel, it seemed that God had left them alone to wander on paths that were far from his own.

However, “this was an effect of the infidelity of the people themselves,” he said, explaining that we often find ourselves in the same state of infidelity to God’s call: “he shows us the good path, the path of faith and love, but we look for our happiness somewhere else.”

So to be watchful and alert, then, “are the presuppositions” to stop wandering on paths that are far from God, “lost in our sins and in our infidelity.”

“They are the conditions that allow God to interrupt our existence, to restore meaning to it and to value his presence, full of goodness and tenderness,” he said, and closed his address praying that Mary, the model and icon of vigilant expectation, would guide us to an encounter with her son Jesus, “reviving our love for him.”

After reciting the traditional Angelus prayer, Francis noted how just yesterday he returned from a six-day visit to Burma – also called Myanmar – and Bangladesh, and voiced his gratitude for being able to meet the people in both countries, especially the small Catholic populations of each.

The Pope said he was “edified” by their witness, and the many faces “tried by life,” but who were still “noble and smiling,” made a big impression.  

He also voiced concern and prayer for Honduras, praying that the country would be able to “peacefully overcome” a recent escalation of political unrest and violent protests surrounding the country’s elections after a key candidate was accused of voter fraud.

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Cardinal Walter Kasper. / CNA/Bohumil Petrik.

Munich, Germany, Nov 9, 2021 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
An influential Catholic theologian has said that the German Synodal Way’s “original sin” was setting aside Pope Francis’ call to focus on evangelization… […]