Yesterday the Chancery office sent us two items in the same envelope: guidelines for Lent and Holy Week and promotion of the golf tournament coming up in May for the benefit of the KofC vocations fund.
Lent and golf.
The sublime and the mundane.
Incense filled sanctuaries and sunlit putting greens.
Hmmm...
Anyway, among the guidelines there were a few truly small details that caught the Exorcist's eye.
In April of 2002 the Holy See reallowed the veiling of images in church, but only from the fourth Sunday of Lent till Holy Saturday.
No exposition of the Eucharist is permitted from before evening Mass on Holy Thursday until after the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. This applies even to parishes and religious communities authorized for perpetual adoration. The Blessed Sacrament is taken to an altar of repose after the Mass of the Lord's Supper where it is reposed only in a closed tabernacle or pyx, but not a monstrance. Adoration may be held, but only until the stroke of midnight on Holy Thursday. I wonder how that will fly in the LC centers...
Parish priest have the faculty to confirm at the Paschal Vigil unless the candidate is a baptized, uncatechized Catholic. In that case, specific permission must be requested from the Archbishop.
It may seem strange, but that exception actually says a lot about how the Catholic Church perceives itself. On Holy Saturday, without consulting the bishop, I could confirm an unbaptized adult (after baptizing him, of course), someone baptized in a non-Catholic church, a baptized Catholic who - by no fault of his own - was brought up in a non-Catholic community and therefore, never confirmed and an apostate who has returned to full communion with the Church.
It is only in the case of the negligent, lax or indifferent Catholics (or Catholics brought up by negligent, lax or indifferent parents) that the bishop's specific permission must be sought.
Get it?
OK. Now let's go play golf!
