Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 13, 2023 / 12:10 pm (CNA).
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is gathering in Orlando for its spring meeting with a full agenda, including updates on the national eucharistic revival efforts, a vote on revising the Ethical and Religious Directives for Health Care Services, and a vote on the drafting of a new pastoral statement on persons with disabilities in the life of the Church.
The bishops’ public meetings will take place on June 15 and 16 after the bishops meet privately on June 14 for prayer and fraternal dialogue. The public portion will open with addresses from the apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, and USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, who was elected to the role at the bishops’ fall gathering.
One item that could provoke discussion is the bishops’ vote on moving forward with a revision of a portion of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, which covers the relationship between the Catholic medical professional and the patient.
Some reports indicate that the revision would update the directives to align with a March doctrinal note from the bishops, which states that “Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures.”
The vote to green-light a revision would also come on the heels of a report from the Lepanto Institute, released Monday, alleging that the largest Catholic health care system in the U.S., CommonSpirit Health, is performing transgender surgeries and providing hormone-based transgender therapies.
Another prominent agenda item is an update from Bishop Andrew Cozzens of the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, on the National Eucharistic Revival initiative and National Eucharistic Congress. The three-year initiative that began in June 2022 aims to “renew the Church by enkindling a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ in the holy Eucharist.”
With eucharistic processions held across the country on the feast of Corpus Christi, the revival entered its second year aimed at fostering eucharistic devotion at the parish level. The bishops are also planning a two-month National Eucharistic Pilgrimage starting in May 2024 with four major pilgrimage routes ending at the National Eucharistic Congress on July 16, 2024, in Indianapolis.
Another event that the bishops will receive an update on at their spring gathering is the upcoming World Youth Day 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal, in August.
Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, chairman of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, will lead a vote Friday requesting approval for the drafting of a new pastoral statement from the bishops addressing persons with disabilities in the life of the Church. The new statement will likely take into account developments in technology, a rise in autism diagnoses, and changes in the way issues involving persons with disabilities are discussed since the bishops’ first pastoral statement on the issue in 1978.
The bishops will also consider advancing the cause on the local level of the beatification and canonization of the Shreveport Martyrs, five French Roman Catholic priests who died ministering to the sick in Shreveport, Louisiana, amid the 1873 yellow fever epidemic.
The five priests — Fathers Jean Pierre, Isidore A. Quémerais, Jean-Marie Biler, Louis Gergaud, and François Le Vézouët — were named Servants of God in December 2020. Pierre, Quémerais, and Biler stayed in Shreveport as many fled the illness that wiped out a fourth of the city’s population in three months. Gergaud and Vézouët traveled to the city to care for the sick before both priests also succumbed to the illness.
Other agenda items for the bishops’ spring meeting include consideration of a new national pastoral plan for Hispanic/Latino ministry and a presentation on the Catholic Project’s National Study of Catholic Priests from Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing, Michigan, chair of the Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations. The study found in October that burnout and trust issues with their bishops were among significant concerns for diocesan priests.
The bishops will also receive an update on the 2021 to 2024 Synod of Bishops from Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas.
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About the Eucharistic revival (aka coherence…), first, the underlying fact is the mystery of the Incarnation into human history. Do we really “get” this?
As bishops and pastors personally and individually preach the mysteries of both the Incarnation and then the Real Presence (the indivisibility of Christ: “body and blood, and soul and divinity [!]” CCC 1374), Luigi Guissani offers a helpful focus (“At the Origin of the Christian Claim,” McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998; p. 107):
“The theory of the incarnation was meditated, scrutinized, explored by the early fathers who elaborated its theology. Their points of departure were documents which set down in writing the facts [!], experiences, actions, teachings, everything concerning Jesus of Nazareth. The theologians of the centuries to follow based their work on the first-hand experiences of those who had lived with Jesus of Nazareth, who had accompanied him [the foundational “accompaniment”], listened to him, observed him. This first-hand experience is the point of departure for a special science called Christology—the science which revolves around that singular person who is Jesus Christ.
“This science is neither deductive nor a priori. It is an inductive science which developed from an event [!], from an objective fact [!], from a first-hand experience noted down and written in the documents collated in that small library called the Books of the New Testament. These books, it should be understood, neither supplied nor conserved the first-hand experience in its entirety…They gathered information, oral traditions, which originated ultimately from him who was the object of these traditions [….]
“There was nothing ambiguous [!] about this first-hand experience of eye-witnesses. Jesus of Nazareth was a man, completely and totally man, anatomically, physiologically and psychologically. But he was not just a man for he possessed a knowledge, a wisdom, a faculty, a holiness that are not of men but of the uncreated Creator, of God. Such is the initial experience” (citation from C. Tresmontant, Problemes du christianisme, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980; pp. 253-4).
The Real Presence as the unbloody “renewal and extension” (JP II) of the singular act by the singular One on Calvary. Not as possibly misunderstood by an ambiguously evangelized laity…. Because categorically more than only a set of gospel values, or even a memorial subject to “revival.”
The consecration in the Mass is not something that “we” do through a mere presider.
Our Bishops would like to have us to “renew the Church by enkindling a living relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ in the holy Eucharist.” The Novus Ordo Missae is modeled after the common prayer service of the Protestant Reformation/Rebellion. Cramner, Bucer, Luther and company obliterated the Latin Mass and removed all reference to anything suggesting the real presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist to arrive at their common prayer service. Fast forward 50-years and our Bishops are wondering why Catholic faithful are having a hard time with the teaching of the Real Presence in the Novus Order Missae. You have to be kidding me.
Hmm. Maybe if the Bishops (and I realize a lot of them were not Bishops at the time so many years ago) had paid more attention to the contraception/NFP issue,
the fetal cell lines used in vaccines issue, and the IVF issue, they might not now be worried about Catholic doctors and hospitals participating in “gender affirming” care issue.
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May God Bless you. I feel that your observation hits the nail on the head, so to speak. ” No man can serve two masters.” The Bishops ignoring the fetal cell lines in the vaccines , to me is a perfect example of them trying. In the Old Testament Little David ignored the armor offered him and just depended on God. I feel that we must return to the trust in an all powerful God who meets our needs. ” Our daily Bread.”
Eucharistic Revival, A very proper subject for our time.
The Bishops and Priest have worked hard to cause the need for this to become necessary. I never objected to the loss of Latin but the lack of respect and sanctity our protestant designed new mass has given to us
1, The altar of Sacrifice was replaced by a table. Now, just showing a meal for the assembled community.
2,The Altar rail was removed so now there is no visual “Holy Space”
3, The name for the prayer of Consecration is now referred to as the prayer of institution4,
4, ,At the Consecration most priests stopped genuflections in exchange for a simple bow.
After the Consecration, when we believed that Christ was now on the Alter and we began our prayers for the reception of Him in communion. We are now to drop that and go visit with those around us with the kiss of peace. Some priests would leave Christ on the Altar ang go up and down the church building promoting this Sacrilege.
6, When I asked about this I was told ” Christ is just as present in the assembled as He is in the bread & Wine, He is every where”
I never objected to the loss of Latin however we were promised the old mass in English not a new rite with a new concept.
Based on what I have lived through since the 60’s I can see why church attendance has dropped and that why many, even the clergy do not believe in a sharing of the sacrifice of Calvary at Mass or a Real Presence by just observing their casual attitudes at the Masses they preside over. I hope and pray that the Bishops can see some reasons to restore a Holy Sacrifice of the Mass said like some thing Holy is happening once again.
We read: “A very proper subject for our time.”
Yes, as you describe it, but note, however, that Eucharistic “revival” is an apparent compromise, within the divided USCCB, away from Eucharistic “coherence”–originally as if sacramental incorporation into Christ carries over indivisibly into sound morality (abortion politicians, for example), as in faith & morals.
Isn’t a “revival” at risk of being akin to the big-tent, pentecostal Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries? But, yes, as “a very proper subject for our [unevangelized] time,” there’s a need to start at very the beginning.