Catholic Church adopts new liturgy

The Vatican has approved a new English liturgy for the Catholic church that follows the original Latin Mass more closely and is more formal in style. The liturgy will be used for the first time Sunday when the Advent season begins, USA Today reported. It will be heard in all churches where the mass is said or sung in English from Britain and Ireland to the United States and Australia. The current liturgy was adopted 41 years ago in the wake of Vatican II. The council approved a switch from the Latin mass to services in the languages spoken by Catholic congregations. Monsignor C. Eugene Morris, director of Sacred Liturgy for the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, said the new liturgy is deeper and richer. "God merits elegant language, not 'Hey, God, it's me,'" he said. But many priests in the United States and elsewhere and lay Catholics object both to the changes and to the top-down process of approving it. "Our liturgy is the work of the people at prayer, and the people of God have had no voice whatsoever in this," Gloria Ulterino of Rochester, N.Y., told USA Today.