Wednesday, January 30, 2008
CHANGES IN ROME
Freeing the Tridentine is not the only change that has occurred across the pond. As Chiesa reports:
In "L'Osservatore Romano" on January 5, cardinal Cláudio Hummes, prefect of the congregation for the clergy, announced that he had sent to bishops, pastors, religious superiors, and seminary rectors all over the world a letter to ask that in every diocese "cenacles" of perpetual Eucharistic adoration be established, with the aim of "sanctifying" priests through prayer.
Among the motivations for the initiative, Hummes explicitly referred to the sexual "sins" committed on the part of a "minimal" but still significant part of the clergy:
"We ask all to do Eucharistic adoration in order to make reparation before God for the grave injury that has been done, and to recover the dignity of the victims. Yes, we wanted to think of the victims, so that they might feel that we are near. They are uppermost in our thoughts; it is important to say this."
There has also been a change in the making of saints:
In an interview with "L'Osservatore Romano" on January 9, and in an unsigned note published by the same newspaper four days later, cardinal José Saraiva Martins, prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints, announced that toward the end of February there will be the public presentation of the instruction "Sanctorum Mater," on the opening of causes of beatification, an instruction that until now was known only to those directly involved in the process.
The document – dated May 17, 2007, the Italian text of which was published in "Acta Apostolicae Sedis" issue no. 6, June 1, 2007, pp. 465-510 – translates into precise norms the guidelines that Benedict XVI gave to the congregation for the causes of saints in a message on April 27, 2006.
Caution and accuracy: these are the criteria that the pope and the congregation want to see more closely observed.
In particular, the instruction demands that "the seriousness of the investigations" into the alleged miracles "be safeguarded, [...] the procedures for the examination of which have, over the last twenty years, produced problematic elements."
There is a picture at the website of Benedict saying Mass facing the altar. Does this reflect a trend that will catch on?
Hat tip to New Oxford Review for the link.
