That ’homiletic directory’
Pope Francis wanted to ditch
Translated from
February 10, 2015
The
Direttorio omiletico published today by the Congreegation for Divine Worship has had a curious history. It has the approval of Pope Francis [dim=9pt[
otherwise it could not have been published], and therefore his ‘paternity’. But it is completely different from what Jorge Mario Bergoglio would have wanted it to be, going by what he said about it in 2006.
On March 1 that year, a month before the death of John Paul II, the CDW of which Cardinal Bergoglio was a member, held a plenary in Rome to discuss the publication of a directory
[’directory’;in this sense does not mean a list of names but rather an ‘instruction manual’, a manual of directions (or orientations] on the
ars celebrandi, the art of celebrating Mass, with particular attention to the homily. At which Bergoglio was assigned to write the ‘Ponenza’, or introduction.
Such a book had been planned for years, but in 2005, it was still ‘out at sea’, and the cardinals and bishops of the CDW had two drafts in mind.
Well, Bergoglio suggested that both drafts should be thrown into the wastebasket
the Italian verb used by Magister is ‘cestinare’], suggesting a new draft that would be ‘more meditative, fresh and vital’.
He added: “I think that the document should not be an instruction, and probably should not even be called a ‘directory’ which would make it too burdensome”.
[So, he was always the advocate of Nice-and-Easy!]
The remarkable thing about that 2005 intervention by Bergoglio is that in recent days, it has been published on the Vatican website, ten years after the fact [normally, these interventions are kept secret]
http://www.vicariatusurbis.org/SITO/L%27ars%20celebrandi.pdf[//dim]
and printed for distribution to all the priests of Rome before their start-of-Lent meeting with the Pope on Thursday, February 19. A meeting which is supposed to focus on the [ars celebrandi’, particularly the homily.
Ten years have passed, and it is only now that the CDW book has finally been published.
Cardinal Bergoglio said then that it should not be a ‘directory’, but it is, from its very title. He said it should be ‘brief’, but it is 156 pages long. [Actually,I consdiering that there are 52 Sundays in a year, then and a directory covering the three-year lectionary cycle would mean excatly 156 Sunday readings to be commented on Scripturally and exegetically. Which means that the directory gives no more than one page to each Sunday. Which suggests a directory of orientations, not of specific instructions.]
Pope Francis [must have] formally approved it. But whatever he has wished to say about the homily he said in an ‘ad hoc’ section ofhis programmatic Apostolic Exhorattion
Evangelii gaudium.
And he gives an example every morning at Casa Santa Marta of what he wants homilies to be.
[Which, I remarked when the Direttorio Omiletico first came out, contravenes many of the points he makes in EG about what a homily ought to be. Notably, his daily homilettes seem to be singularly lacking in preparation – and one has the impression he so prides himself on his homiletic skills that he thinks he does very well speaking off the cuff in his matutinal pontifications.]
POST SCRIPTUM – After this post went online, the CDW hastened to note that in fact, there is no direct continuity between the
Direttorio omiletico and Cardinal Bergoglio’s 2005 ‘Ponenza’.
That, on that occasion, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires proposed a document on ‘Ars celebrandi’in general, a suggestion that was not followed up. That, for the book focusing on the homily, the introduction was assigned instead to Cardinal Ivan Dias, thenPrefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
In the CDW’s official organ
Notitiae for 2005, 8it is said that there was no existing draft about the homily in 2005, but that at the plenary, it had been suggested that “if a text on the homily is elaborated, it should be contained within an eventaul document about the ‘ars celebrandi'.”
[i.e., Cardinal Bergoglio's suggestion.]
.
But it didn’t happen that way. The book on the homily took on a life of its own and has now come out as a book.
[What Magister does not mention is that, as recounted at the presnetation news conference of the Direttorio omiletico, the initiative for the ‘homily project’ took new life with a provision about the homily Benedict XVI’s historic post-synodal Aposortlic Exhortation on the Synod on the Eucharist, Sacramentum caritatis , furhter reinforced by a provision in his post-
Synodal Apostlic Exhortation on the Word of God, Verbum Domini... JMB/PF could not have denied his imprimatur for the book because it would have meant not just jettisoning more than 10 years of work by the CDW but also directly contravening synodal recommendations endorsed by Benedict XVI in his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortations. So, he has sought to assert himself, beign Pope now, through the publication and dissemination of his 2005 intervention.][/coiore]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/02/2015 00:57]