"Yea, uh first off, it was not sent to Rome, and the Vatican never rejected it. Nope, nope… never happened. Uh, what did happen is the final draft, Monsignor Moroney and I went to meet with an official in the Holy See because the plan at that point was, after the Bishops approve it, they will send it to Rome so that Rome gives its Recognitio and it will all become particular law in the United States. When we met with the official I will tell you what he said about it. It's quite amazing that the US is the one Church that stands out for its attention to all of this. He said, "Ya know", well, he didn't want to name names, "but said you wouldn't see this coming from other parts of the Catholic world." And he said, "We in Rome look with such great respect at how alive the US Church is."

Then when the US Bishops did their final preparing of the final draft, uh, the committee of Bishops before it would go to the whole body, they said, "Ya know what? Some of this will contradict particular law in other documents. For example it says here that "everyone should stand for the hymn after communion if it befits the hymn". But in the General Instruction we weren't thinking about a hymn after communion and you remember the hulabaloo we went through on the posture for communion. So we would have to redo that." And then they came up with other cases like that. And then they all said, "Ya know what, let's just leave it a document of the US Bishops. Let's not go there. Let's not reapprove all our previous documents." So they didn't.

Now you can read on the web, "well I'm not surprised that they didn't dare send it to Rome because they knew that they would have got taken to the wood shed because the liberal establishment is still in charge, they're still hi-jacking the whole church, they're still not obedient to the Holy Father. So they didn't even dare to submit it.

Well, ya know, it's all made up. Ya know, I was there; I heard what the Vatican official said. He had no criticisms of it, but he didn't say we would reserve the right when we finally examine it. So he didn't promise that the whole thing will be approved. But he said, "I only have praise for what I see right here".

The other thing is, ah, we have to remember that every Bishop is the Vicar of Christ in his diocese. Sometimes we have the impression that only the Pope is and it's only Catholic if he approves it. Ah, the Pope has a unique role in teaching and in approving as does the Vatican. But throughout most of our tradition, uh, there was no Vatican office to take care of all of this stuff.

The Vatican office for liturgy didn't exist until the sixteenth century. The Pope only began appointing all the Bishops of the world in the nineteenth century. As late as 1850 the vast majority of Bishops were elected by their own clergy. So we sometimes have this impression that its only Catholic if the Vatican has approved all of it. And we have to remind ourselves, that's not our tradition. What we have now is what we have now. Now the Pope does appoint every Bishop, but that's a very recent oddity. Now the Pope does issue encyclicals. He never did such a thing until the 18 hun…, uh seventeen hundreds.

The first encyclical where a Pope issued a teaching document for the whole world was the 18th century. Popes never issued comprehensive teaching documents for the whole world before then.

So, and I, ya know, I… I'm not saying that the Pope isn't important, I hope you don't hearing me saying that. But I am saying that it's a real distortion to think that only the central authority approves it to make it Catholic. I think Bishops have a role in their own country.

Then, Oh, I have to, oh… (mature?) the most important part will now be done in a minute and forty-five seconds, because I want to say the ultimate criterion of all of this is not which document, which model, which paradigm, which theology but Jesus Christ. He participated in his traditional Jewish ritual tradition, but he also critiqued it. He critiqued the legalism, he critiqued the formalism of it, he believed that organized religion can be (aphorist?) that misses the whole point. So he was basically a prophet who, ah, pretty strongly critiqued the religious hierarchy of his day. He was a man of prayer; he wasn't just, ya know, a secular hippie doing justice and not worrying about all that churchy stuff. He would spend a whole night in prayer. He was, ya know, I sort of like to think of him, as, kind of a radical prophet and a monk at the same time, but that's a biased way of looking at it. So, if that image doesn't work for you, I understand.

Ah, as I said before, he was inclusive beyond all of the accepted social norms of, ya know, women and children and people from other religious traditions. He didn't preach the Church. He preached the Kingdom of God. He said really next to nothing about this is what the Church should be like and these are the structures of it. Instead he said, "You know the kingdom of God is like a man who went out to sow."

So if we're overly focused on church documents we've missed the point if we don't use those documents to understand 'what is this kingdom of God like?' This kingdom of God where the values of this world are turned upside down. This kingdom of God where… the… the mighty are cast down from their thrones… the rich go away empty handed, but the poor are now included. That's what he was interested in is the kingdom, and not, let's just set up organized religion with lots of rules. And, he offered himself completely to the Father. This is what the Sacrifice of the Mass is about, that we, in Christ, completely offer ourself to the Father.

So, we want to draw from every document, from every model, but realize that the purpose of all of them is that so that we can live in Christ. OK? Thank you."