ACI Prensa, the Spanish version of the Catholic News Agency, reports that Pope Benedict definitively approved the Statutes of the Neocatechumental Way, placing his signature on the final text yesterday.
[Update - May 25, 2008: Gianluca Barilla informs today in his papal news website Petrus that "The Holy Father, Benedict XVI, has in fact decided to approve the Statutes of the Way only 'ad experimentum', that is, temporarily and not in a definitive way, until 2015: it will be then that it will be decided if one of the most controversial and studied movements in the history of the Catholic laity will be officially recognized." Barilla adds that the Pope made his decision "after having read with attention a dossier of 80 pages and listened carefully to the opinions of the Congregations for the Laity and for the Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments ... , since the Liturgy has not yet been adapted to the official one and the catecheses are in need of ulterior corrections, not being in full conformity with the Magisterium of the Church."]
The statutes had been approved "ad experimentum", for a period of five years, on June 29, 2002.
The changes which may have been introduced in the statutes regarding the uncommon liturgical practices of "The way", following the recommendations of the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship (December 1, 2005), are still unclear.
For instance, has the custom of "los kikos" (as they often called in Spanish in a reference to their founder, Kiko Argüello) of receiving Communion while remaining seated been phased out after two years, as the Congregation determined in 2005?
[Update - May 25, 2008: Gianluca Barilla informs today in his papal news website Petrus that "The Holy Father, Benedict XVI, has in fact decided to approve the Statutes of the Way only 'ad experimentum', that is, temporarily and not in a definitive way, until 2015: it will be then that it will be decided if one of the most controversial and studied movements in the history of the Catholic laity will be officially recognized." Barilla adds that the Pope made his decision "after having read with attention a dossier of 80 pages and listened carefully to the opinions of the Congregations for the Laity and for the Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments ... , since the Liturgy has not yet been adapted to the official one and the catecheses are in need of ulterior corrections, not being in full conformity with the Magisterium of the Church."]
The statutes had been approved "ad experimentum", for a period of five years, on June 29, 2002.
The changes which may have been introduced in the statutes regarding the uncommon liturgical practices of "The way", following the recommendations of the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship (December 1, 2005), are still unclear.
For instance, has the custom of "los kikos" (as they often called in Spanish in a reference to their founder, Kiko Argüello) of receiving Communion while remaining seated been phased out after two years, as the Congregation determined in 2005?
5. On the manner of receiving Holy Communion, a period of transition (not exceeding two years) is granted to the Neocatechumenal Way to pass from the widespread manner of receiving Holy Communion in its communities (seated, with a cloth-covered table placed at the center of the church instead of the dedicated altar in the sanctuary) to the normal way in which the entire Church receives Holy Communion. This means that the Neocatechumenal Way must begin to adopt the manner of distributing the Body and Blood of Christ that is provided in the liturgical books.Of course not: who cares about obeying Rome in "The way", anyway? On April 24, less than a month ago, in the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Namur, Belgium (one of a large number of seminaries of the same name run by the Neocatechumenal Way around the world), this is how Communion was distributed: as always, a single pancake-sized host is consecrated and then broken into many pieces, and distributed to the sitting congregation - 2 years, 4 months, and 23 days after the two-year phase-out deadline given by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
