In NCR, Joe Feuerherd discusses the bishops’ meeting, starting with the "Christ Has Died" question

The normally taciturn archbishop of New York, Cardinal Edward Egan, was positively animated. “I really believe the pastoral consideration has to prevail here,” implored the 73-year-old Egan. “We have to stop this… [and] not give the impression that everything is up for grabs.”

Egan’s topic at the June 16-18 meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was not consequences for priests who abuse minors, though that was the agenda. Nor was he addressing the death penalty, Catholic schools, lay ecclesial ministry or priestly formation — all subjects of discussion and deliberation at the three-day meeting.

Instead, Egan’s passions were piqued by a proposal that would have scrapped “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again” as one of four “memorial acclamations” included in the Mass’s Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Egan had allies. It is “time for common sense” to prevail, said Youngstown, Ohio, Bishop Thomas Tobin, who rose in support of a prayer that “is very well known and very useful for our people.” Mobile Archbishop Oscar Lipscomb, calling it a “very valid act of faith,” offered a proposal to restore the acclamation.

Arguing for its elimination was Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pa., chairman of the bishops’ Liturgy Committee. The acclamation, first adopted in 1970, is not found in the Ordo Missae, the Order of the Mass, nor is it a translation from Latin, said Trautman. Further, said Trautman, unlike the other acclamations — such as, “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus” — the “Christ has died” acclamation is “more an assertion of the Paschal Mystery, rather than a unique expression of the gathered assembly of its own incorporation into the Paschal Mystery.”

Chicago Cardinal Francis George, until recently chairman of the bishop’s Liturgy Committee, suggested that action on the recommendation might be premature, that it could wait until the new Latin language Roman Missal is received in the United States. Gently reminded that it was under his leadership that the committee initially made its recommendation to remove the acclamation, George looked surprised.

“I was wrong,” he deadpanned.