…THIS?

THE LITURGICAL YEAR AND INCULTURATION
13th Asian Liturgy Forum (ALF)
South-East Asian Region,
September 16-20, 2009
Bahay Pari, San Carlos Pastoral Formation Complex, Edsa, Makati City

We, the delegates to the 13th Asian Liturgy Forum of South-East Asia, met from September 16-19, 2009 to discuss the timely and urgent topic of Liturgical Year and Inculturation. The meeting was held in Bahay-Pari of San Carlos Pastoral Formation Complex, Makati City, Philippines, under the auspices of His Eminence Gaudencio B. Cardinal Rosales, Archbishop of Manila to whom we express profound gratitude. The delegates to the meeting came from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. We are now pleased to share the result of our three-day meeting.

1. The history of the liturgical year shows that the calendar of feasts has been constantly adjusting itself to political, cultural, and religious environment of local Churches. This should serve as a guiding principle in our work of inculturating the liturgical year.
2. We note that inculturation normally takes place within the framework of approved liturgical books, whereby the substantial unity of the Roman Rite is preserved. Hence, the inculturation of the liturgical calendar does not result in a totally new calendar that is an alternative to the typical edition of the Roman Rite.

3. However, we acknowledge that inculturation might not always be sufficient to address certain local needs. We would not preclude the creation of particular liturgical calendars while retaining the register of feasts of the Roman Rite.

4. Roman traditional liturgical symbols may need to be adjusted in accord with the seasons of the year in the local Church. This would be applicable, for example, to liturgical feasts like Christmas and Easter whose original symbols do not correspond to existing seasons of the year in a particular Church.

5. Inspired by liturgical history, we recognize the role of local cultural and social traditions in the institution of some liturgical feasts like the Chair of St. Peter in Rome, which originated in the ancestral feast of ancient Rome called parentalia. In accord with liturgical norms, local Churches could institute feasts derived from their traditional and other established practices.

6. Likewise, the cycle of human work has shaped some liturgical celebrations like Rogation and Ember days. We believe that in the industrial world marked by the rhythm of work and rest, production and consumption, and strikes and negotiations, the Church should similarly establish pertinent liturgical feasts.

7. In regions where popular pious exercises abound and continue to be meaningful to the faithful the liturgical calendar can be enriched by the integration of popular religious practices with the liturgical feasts.

8. Sometimes political situations have left their mark on the liturgical calendar as witnessed by the institution of the feasts of Christ the King and St. Joseph the Worker. Local Churches may propose similar feasts to accompany the faithful across political systems.

In conclusion, given that time is relative, that situations are provisional, and that culture and traditions are in constant evolution, the Church should continue to revise, reinvent, and create liturgical feasts that meet the actual needs of the faithful.

That in all things God may be glorified.

I’m dying to know.

How many times must the Holy Father be surrounded by controversy spurred by nothing but various inordinate misinterpretations by those who cannot seem to grasp his paternal mercies? Before it was the Good Friday prayer for the Jews for the 1962 Missale Romanum, and now an east to west condemnation of his echoing Church teaching against the misconceptions that condoms can bar AIDS transmission! I personally can just imagine how much the Pope is suffering terribly right now. He has done nothing wrong but stick to doctrine, to orthodoxy, to proclaiming what the Word really intends to teach–as against distortions dominating many of today’s so-called “free thinkers” and “progressivists.”.

The question that has incessantly drilled itself into each and every person’s cerebral cortex: What is necessary? What is essential? We mostly balk at our incapabilities of comprehending the entirety of this life’s essence and thus resign pathetically in the notion that to live in utter convenience comprises life in itself. So what is necessity? What is necessary? If we do not know even that wherewith we must all cling to, how can we even say that we are entitled to life and all its travails? We defend nothing about ourselves if such is the case for we have all failed in acknowledging Him Who bequeathes essence.

May St. Joseph, the patron of the universal church, pray for us!

The Pope, on his recent visit to the convent of the Oblate Sisters of Sta Francesca Romana in Rome, called contemplative communities as a sort of “spiritual lung” for the Church. A timely report indeed for this holy season of Lent, to remind us lay people of the value of contemplation amidst silence and detachment.

Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-25319?l=english
Pontiff Says Contemplatives Give Breath to World

Calls Communities a “Spiritual Lung”

ROME, MARCH 9, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Contemplative communities are called to be a type of “spiritual lung” for the world, so that spiritual “respiration” is not strangled by the bustle of cities, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope said this today when he visited the Oblate Sisters of Santa Francesca Romana. He stopped at the convent after having visited the headquarters of Rome’s civil authorities, where he addressed the mayor and other civil leaders.

Today is the feast day of St. Francesca (1384-1440), whom the Holy Father referred to as “the most Roman of saints.”

After spending some time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and in veneration of the saint’s body, the Pope addressed the sisters and students that reside at the center.

Referring to his spiritual exercises last week with the members of the Curia, the Holy Father said “he had felt once again how indispensable silence and prayer are.”

He noted how the convent is located at the heart of the city, saying, “How can we not see in it the symbol of the need to return the spiritual dimension to the center of civil coexistence, to give full meaning to the multiple activities of the human being?”

The Bishop of Rome told the nuns: “Your community, together with the other communities of contemplative life, is called to be a sort of ’spiritual lung’ of society, so that the performance, the activism of a city, is not devoid of spiritual ‘respiration,’ the reference to God and his plan of salvation. [...]

“A singular balance is lived here between religious and secular life, between the life of the world and outside of the world. A model that was not born in a laboratory, but in the concrete experience of a young Roman woman: written — it could be said — by God himself in Francesca’s extraordinary existence.

“It is no accident that the walls of this environment are decorated with images of her life, demonstrating that the real building that God wishes to construct is the life of the saints.”

In this context, the Pope stressed that also today “Rome needs women who are all for God and for their neighbor; women able to recollect themselves and give generous and discreet service; women who are able to obey their pastors, but also able to support and motivate them with their suggestions.”

This vocation “is the gift of a maternity that is made one with religious oblation, modeled after Mary,” the Pontiff reflected. “Mary’s heart is the cloister where the Word continues to speak in silence, and at the same time is the furnace of a charity that leads to courageous gestures, and also to a persevering and hidden generosity.”

Many things are happening in the Church right now, what of many liberals criticising the Pope for the now-emancipated-from-excommunication Bishop Williamson’s remarks on the Jews, all-too negative impressions on Il Papa’s paternal moves on the SSPX (well, it’s high time the West be unified, along with the other parties’ cooperation), a case now unfolding regarding a pre-eminent congregation’s status, etc. Not to mention that the world is currently bludgeoned by anti-life policies instigated by no less than the policy-making bodies of the present US administration. May God continue to be merciful on us and save us!

Let us pray for the Pope, and the Church as a whole.

Santa Maria Purissima, ora pronobis.

I’m making this pretty quick, as it’s our office lunch break as I write this post. I must culminate this “extra” activity of mine before the rest of the office population (and my boss, at that) arrives.

It is of every Pro-Lifer’s knowledge that a handful of congressman are now utterly persistent to let the controversial Reproductive Health Bill leave their tables, eventually hieing off towards approval by the Lower House. This indeed is a sad blow to the ever-lingering Catholic Christian influence that we Filipinos have long treasured in our culture, especially during these trying times of moral decrepitude. Not for once has the Church repudiated anything that has got to do with contraception, much less its implementation especially so that studies are circulating nowadays that the so-called “population explosion” has been proven to be but a nice myth for us to laugh at. And now, these so-called “feminists” are now doing their best to scrape away such a reverent culture of Christianity once heavily ingrained in all of our countrymen’s bosoms!

in the name of true freedom, I heretofore unite myself with those whose Christian principles remain steadfast in the midst of moral persecution. I also heretofore unite myself with the Church in calling for solidarity amongst the brethren in denouncing this act of Beelzebul.

Sedes Sapientiae, ora pronobis!!