Fr. Roger J. Landry
\nThe Anchor
\nPutting Out Into The Deep
\nMay 10, 2013<\/p>\n
During my years at the helm of The Anchor, I always had the half-mischievous, half-evangelical desire to put on the front page above the fold a headline with the biggest font in The Anchor\u2019s history, declaring, \u201cJesus Christ coming to our diocese!\u201d<\/p>\n
I knew that if we had an edition announcing, \u201cPope coming to our diocese!,\u201d people would be passionately interested in the details of how they would be able to be in the pope\u2019s presence and see, hear, touch and meet him.<\/p>\n
I was interested to know whether the headline about Jesus\u2019 coming to the diocese, which obviously would catch readers\u2019 attention, would keep their attention once we described where Jesus would be appearing in the Flesh (and Blood, Soul and Divinity): namely, their own home parish, where they would have the chance to see, hear, touch and meet the eternal Son of God.<\/p>\n
The truth is that the most important thing that happens in our diocese on a daily and weekly basis is what Jesus Himself does: teaching us through His word, feeding us with Himself, making us members of His Body, absolving our sins, joining men and women in one flesh, helping us to sanctify our work, moving us to love others as He has loved us, and bringing us into the communion He shares with His Father and the Holy Spirit. <\/p>\n
We don\u2019t treat this as \u201cnews,\u201d because Jesus\u2019 doing these things has been a constant in these parts for more than a century. But at the same time, we ought to ensure we don\u2019t take Jesus\u2019 activities for granted or them in favor of what\u2019s novel and passing.<\/p>\n
The most important news for Catholics to know is the greatest news of all, that the One Whose presence the angels heralded to shepherds is still present, now in even humbler appearances.<\/p>\n
This is one of the reasons why I am so happy that, as part of his reform of the Church, Pope Francis is focusing the attention of Catholics throughout the world on the most important event he has on his daily papal calendar: Mass.<\/p>\n
In the past, \u201cbig\u201d papal Masses would always draw press attention, when the pope would celebrate Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, canonizations, ordinations, World Youth Days or other significant occasions in Rome or elsewhere.<\/p>\n
But the daily Mass and even most Sunday Masses of the Holy Father would draw little attention at all.<\/p>\n
During the papacy of John Paul II, the morning Masses were celebrated with a group of special visitors who had written for the privilege of attending, but there would be no homily, no press coverage, no news.<\/p>\n
During Pope Benedict\u2019s time, he normally celebrated private Masses with just his priest secretaries and the four consecrated women who took care of his apartment.<\/p>\n
Pope Francis has taken to celebrating a semi-public daily Mass each morning in the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he has taken up residence. He has been inviting different groups of Vatican employees or other groups each day to join him for Mass and he prayerfully prepares a homily for them that he preaches a braccio, or \u201coff the cuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
These daily Masses, and daily homilies based normally on the readings of the day, are a revolution. They have made many of those who work around the pope \u2014 who have the job of worrying, and do it well! \u2014 quite nervous because no one knows in advance what the Holy Father will say or how it will come out.<\/p>\n
A former professor of mine is now the papal theologian, the one whose task is normally to read in advance all of the pope\u2019s homilies, speeches, talks to ensure that they\u2019re in line with the Catholic faith. Once I had invited him to come have dinner with a group of pilgrims I had brought to Rome and one of them asked him what the papal theologian\u2019s job description was. \u201cMy job is to keep the pope infallible!,\u201d he joked in response.<\/p>\n
During the Middle Ages, when those elected pope didn\u2019t have anywhere near the formidable theological education of recent successors of St. Peter, making sure the pope didn\u2019t say anything that confused the faith and the faithful was a serious concern.<\/p>\n
Even today, however, when there\u2019s not much unease about a brilliant pope\u2019s saying anything contrary to the faith, there\u2019s still a concern that, if the pope says something no one else has reviewed, what comes out might become an unnecessary distraction from the overall message.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what happened to Pope Benedict in Regensburg when his citation of a 13th-century opinion about Muhammad and violence in the midst of a brilliant talk on faith and reason became the sole story. Benedict had been working on the talk the night before it was to be given and no one else had a chance to review it. If someone had, he likely would have suggested editing the remark that some outside of the academic setting interpreted as incendiary.<\/p>\n
But there are also concerns about the form that papal teaching takes. Normally popes teach in formal and official ways, through written homilies, allocutions, addresses, messages, encyclicals, exhortations and the like.<\/p>\n
When John Paul II did the book length interview \u201cCrossing the Threshold of Hope\u201d in 1994, many theologians didn\u2019t know how to classify it. Were John Paul\u2019s responses to be considered official papal teaching or personal opinion?<\/p>\n
When Pope Benedict XVI authored three different volumes of the \u201cJesus of Nazareth\u201d series, he said in the introduction that he was explicitly writing in a personal capacity and invited scholars and others to disagree with him. But the basically unprecedented distinction between the pope\u2019s \u201cmagisterial\u201d thoughts on Jesus from his \u201cpersonal\u201d thoughts on Jesus continues to give many Vatican officials and Catholic theologians ulcers.<\/p>\n
But with both of these innovations, there was at least an opportunity for revisions and editing.<\/p>\n
Preaching off the cuff publicly at daily Mass is, in my opinion, a much greater adjustment in the way the pope exercises his teaching office.<\/p>\n
At first, the official organs of Vatican News didn\u2019t know what to do with this innovation. They weren\u2019t covering the Masses at all, except for a brief notice of which group of Vatican employees had been invited.<\/p>\n
But as Pope Francis has continued to preach each day, the press is now showing up and at least is printing summaries of what he said on Vatican Radio, the L\u2019Osservatore Romano, and in various daily Catholic news services.<\/p>\n
There are no uploaded audio or video versions of his homilies or full transcriptions yet \u2014 a sign, I think, that those who are more cautious in the Vatican still want a chance to revise or edit something that didn\u2019t come out the right way \u2014 but I\u2019m personally hoping that Pope Francis will encourage them to do so.<\/p>\n
The main point, however, is that what the pope preaches each morning is now what leads the normal news coverage of the Vatican. And that, I\u2019m convinced, is exactly what our new Holy Father wants.<\/p>\n
What the pope\u2019s been doing has changed my habits. Each morning, as I\u2019m in the chapel praying before Mass, I now visit the Vatican Radio website, read the summary of what Pope Francis preached a few hours before, and often incorporate what he said into my own daily Mass homily.<\/p>\n
I hope that this reform in the papal ministry will likewise influence your daily habits.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d encourage you, first, to visit Vatican radio each day (http:\/\/en.radiovaticana.va\/index.asp) to see what the pope preached and take it to your prayer. But I\u2019d urge you even more to ponder his sense of priorities and the place of daily Mass in your life.<\/p>\n
Pope Francis is intentionally showing all Catholics how important daily Mass is in the life of the Church.<\/p>\n
As part of his reform of the Church, he\u2019s trying to bring the whole Church with him each day to Christ in the Mass. That\u2019s where Jesus, through His words and Sacramentally-enfleshed word, will help to bring each of us and the whole Church He founded back into shape.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a set of priorities for reform worthy of a big headline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Putting Out Into The Deep May 10, 2013 During my years at the helm of The Anchor, I always had the half-mischievous, half-evangelical desire to put on the front page above the fold a headline with the biggest font in The Anchor\u2019s history, declaring, \u201cJesus Christ coming to our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1013,708],"tags":[1693,1018,1019,1020],"class_list":["post-3684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anchor-column","category-articles","tag-1693","tag-column","tag-putting-into-the-deep","tag-the-anchor"],"yoast_head":"\n