On Christmas Day, Cardinal Stafford announced the Holy Father's grant of indulgences in connection with the Year of the Eucharist:
2. A Plenary Indulgence is also granted to the clergy, members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and to the other faithful bound by law to recite the Liturgy of the Hours, as well as those who are accustomed to praying the Divine Office for pure devotion, every time, at the end of the day, when they recite Vespers and Compline before the Lord present in the tabernacle, either in community or privately.
More information is available in the decree.
The Latin version looks a little sloppy on the Vatican website. Are venerazioni, exspositum and Tabernacolo proper Latin? And is "sacred liturgy" a proper translation of sacrae functioni? Where is Reginald Foster? What have they done with him?
2. Clericis insuper, sodalibus Institutorum Vitae consecratae et Societatum Vitae apostolicae, aliisque christifidelibus qui lege ad Liturgiae Horarum recitationem adstringuntur, vel qui sola devotione Divinum Officium recitare solent, Indulgentia Plenaria conceditur sub enuntiatis condicionibus quotiescumque, declinante die, sive in communi sive privatim, Vesperas et Completorium ante SS.mum Sacramentum venerazioni fidelium exspositum aut in Tabernacolo adservatum, pie persolverint.
That truly is a great gift. I was wondering if anything had been written on the "spirit of total detachment from sin" pertaining to actually be able to gain a "plenary indulgence."
Quousque tandem abutere Vaticanam patientiam nostram?!
The sad state of affairs regarding the Latin language and the upper echelons of the Church is that only a very few people are now educated in a system where the regular use of the Latin language is such that it creeps into your blood. I don't know of any theologate that offers classes in Latin any longer, and none of the Canon Law faculties teach in Latin. The situation isn't entirely dire - Latin is being stressed in some circles again, it's mandatory in the Canon Law faculty that Pete and I are at, and the professor is quite good, but without a base of Latinists who live and breathe the language to draw from, the Latin coming out of the Vatican will continue to get worse until the new Renaissance begins.
O tempora! O mores.
Vaticanam???
Yep, ITALIAN is the official language of the Church now. You can tell this by the number of clergy and sisters from the growing African and Asian orders who are in Rome studying Italian :)
I have been trying to figure out a way to explain the "treasury of merits" to my kids in advance of talking about Lent with them this Sunday, and I came up with the following.
A small pamphlet for Lent sent out by our rector states:
As we strive for purification the Church aids us by urging us to works of devotion, penance and charity, and by dispensing and applying with authority its spiritual treasury. This treasury contains the infinte merits of Christ our Redeemer, as well as the prayers and good works of the Blessed Virgin Mary and those of all the faithful who make up the communion of saints.
Having in mind the objections sometimes made by Protestants about the addition of merit to the merits of the Redeemer, it occurs we can explain it by analogy.
Say a father gives his kids an allowance. And for lent, the children decide to give a portion of their allowance for some good work (like the Rice Bowl that is popular in many parishes). The father then gathers up their offerings, adds in some of his own, and uses this to help someone in need. In a real sense, all of the money offered is the father's...the children only had it from their father to begin with. But the children did indeed make a sacrifice and contribution.
In the same way, all merit is ultimately Christ's, but the merit won by the saints, by His grace, is real as well. As it says in one of the prefaces, God is crowning his own gifts.
I don't know of any theologate that offers classes in Latin any longer
Tim, Latin is taught at Mount St. Mary's and a certain amount of it is required for students to enter theology (e.g. they either have to take it in pre-theology here, or have taken it elsewhere before entering theology here). Does that mean that everyone develops a proficiency in it? Not at all. But it hasn't completely fallen off the horizon, and there are indeed some students who realize its value and are trying to gain mastery in it (like myself, hopefully, please God, some day).
mea culpa for the "Vaticanam" slip there, I was trying to align it with "Catalina," and slipped into the accusative for some reason. It should have been "Vaticane" I suppose...
Good to hear Bryan. We were offered Latin as well when I was in the major seminary (back in the 90's). What I was bemoaning was not the loss of Latin classes, but the loss of classes in Latin. Having professors teach theology, canon law, philosophy, scripture in the language language of the Church. From the older priests I know, who went through the system when at least some of their lectures were delivered in Latin, (besides the daily liturgies) it helped to reinforce their grasp of the language and of the concepts being communicated.
Had I been trained in a system where classes were taught in Latin, perchance I would not have made the egregious error Cicero pointed out above; for which error I must now do penance...
Sloppy Latin is not new, and Fr. Foster is quite aware of it. One of the benefits of his class was being able to listen to him relate stories of the awful Latin in official books that he was assigned to fix before publication, since the original authors didn't know what they were doing. For instance, there is a place in the 1983 CIC that provides a Latin double-entendre implying that the Church has a long tradition of injustice; the new Roman Missal editio typica tertia uses "corpum" as the accusative of "corpus" in several places (oh, the sheer horror!); and the original authors of the new Roman Martyrology confused "eius" and "sua" in several spots. Most of these were published before Fr. Foster could catch them. "Spaghetti Latin," as he used to call it, is even more common. Confusing the dative and ablative according to Italian use instead of Latin use, false cognates, and occasional outright misprints like "venerazioni" or, in the Office of Readings on more than one occasion, "ogni," are all common.
His solution? "I studied Latin for 14 YEARS before I was ordained. YOU SHOULD TOO," he would screech at us at least once a week. Although it's too late for me, serious Latin studies in seminary, instead of treating it as a quasi-elective the way it now is, would be a great start.
They don't -sell- them anymore, do they?
No, but you can get a partial indulgence if you lift your mind and heart to God while writing your donation check.