Archbishop Peter Smith of Southwark has said that Pope Francis’s reforms on liturgical translation are “going to upset some people”, but that the bishops welcome the change.
At a press conference after the bishops’ annual plenary meeting, Archbishop Smith was asked about the Pope’s motu proprio, Magnum Principium, which gives bishops’ conferences more power to issue their own translations of liturgical texts without Vatican oversight.
Archbishop Smith noted that there had been some confusion about the text: one bishop, he said, joked that a better title might have been Magnum Mysterium. But the Congregation for Divine Worship had clarified that it would not apply to texts already published, but only to liturgical books published in the future.
Archbishop Smith said that the bishops were still in the process of studying Amoris Laetitia. The Pope’s apostolic exhortation is a “very rich document”, Archbishop Smith said, and “we need to study it fully”.
The Pope “has not in any way changed the teaching of the Church”, he said.
At the same press conference, Bishop John Sherrington, an auxiliary bishop in Westminster diocese, said that the internet posed “multiple dangers” to children.
Reflecting on a Vatican-organised conference on the internet, he said that “the Holy See is really concerned about the present situation”.
The internet “has a structure that was developed for adults”, the bishop added, “but children and young people use it extensively, and therefore there are many dangers which others can exploit”.
Bishops cut official link with Catholic anti-racism agency
The Catholic Association for Racial Justice (CARJ) is no longer an agency of the bishops’ conference.
A spokesman for the bishops’ conference said its focus had shifted to migrants, refugees and victims of trafficking – an area that CARJ is not so involved in.
The agency was set up to empower black and other ethnic minority Catholics following the race riots of the early 1980s. It became an official bishops’ agency in 2002.
The spokesman said: “Supporting and integrating migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking is an integral part of the Church’s witness in England and Wales. It is the importance of this witness that has led to the bishops focusing this work within the bishops’ conference.”
Yogi Sutton, chairwoman of CARJ, said the association accepted the decision and was committed to developing a positive relationship with the bishops in future. Racial Justice Sunday will continue with a voluntary collection. Next year some of this money will go to CARJ.
Mrs Sutton said CARJ had a wider mission than merely refugees and supported a “variety of vulnerable groups”.
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