The Basilica of St. John Lateran. / Credit: Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
Vatican City, Nov 9, 2023 / 04:00 am (CNA).
The Diocese of Rome has planned a full year of events to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, which was dedicated on Nov. 9, 324.
The church is the cathedral of the diocese and the seat of the bishop of Rome, the pope. Until the 14th century, the adjoining palace served as the papal residence.
While St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist are the archbasilica’s patrons, it is called St. John Lateran because it was built on property donated by the Plautii Laterani family during the Roman Empire.
The date of the basilica’s dedication, Nov. 9, in the year 324 by Pope Sylvester I is a feast day in the Church.
A Latin inscription in the church reads: “Omnium ecclesiarum Urbis et Orbis mater et caput,” which means in English: “The mother and head of all churches of the city and of the world.”
“The cathedral of Rome, Mater et Caput of all the Churches of Rome and the world, is a very special point of reference for our diocese and for the universal Church,” Rome’s vicar, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, said in a post on the Diocese of Rome website.
“In it one breathes the history of 17 centuries, of a basilica built and rebuilt three times, up to the present building of 1700. Five ecumenical councils have taken place in it,” he continued.
“In the See of the Chair of Peter,” De Donatis said, “all Christians of the world feel the bond with the bishop of Rome. In this place we Christians of Rome recognize once again the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, pointed out by [John] the Baptist. Here we feel, like [John] the beloved disciple, the beating heart of Christ, the Savior, consumed with love for all humanity. In the school of the two ‘Johns’ we find the particular vocation of our Church called to preside in charity.”
The Diocese of Rome will open the year of celebrations with a solemn pontifical Mass celebrated by De Donatis in the afternoon on Nov. 9. The Mass will include music written for the occasion by Father Marco Frisina, Italy’s most popular contemporary composer of religious hymns.
Other events planned throughout the year include concerts, Masses, and religious-cultural talks about the history of the archbasilica and the adjoining Lateran Palace.
The anniversary celebrations will close with Mass on Nov. 9, 2024.
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The first words of the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church — one of the council’s two most important texts — signaled a decisive development in Catholic self-understanding. Rather than begin its reflection […]
Bishops process into St. Peter’s Basilica for the closing Mass of the first assembly of the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 29, 2023. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Jul 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
The guiding document for the final part of the Synod on Synodality, published Tuesday, focuses on how to implement certain of the synod’s aims, while laying aside some of the more controversial topics from last year’s gathering, like women’s admission to the diaconate.
“Without tangible changes, the vision of a synodal Church will not be credible,” the Instrumentum Laboris, or “working tool,” says.
The six sections of the roughly 30-page document will be the subject of prayer, conversation, and discernment by participants in the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to be held throughout the month of October in Rome.
Instead of focusing on questions and “convergences,” as in last year’s Instrumentum Laboris, “it is now necessary that … a consensus can be reached,” said a FAQ page from synod organizers, also released July 9, answering a question about why the structure was different from last year’s Instrumentum Laboris.
The guiding document for the first session of the Synod on Synodality in 2023 covered such hot-button topics as women deacons, priestly celibacy, and LGBTQ outreach.
By contrast, this year’s text mostly avoids these subjects, while offering concrete proposals for instituting a listening and accompaniment ministry, greater lay involvement in parish economics and finances, and more powerful parish councils.
“It is difficult to imagine a more effective way to promote a synodal Church than the participation of all in decision-making and taking processes,” it states.
The working tool also refers to the 10 study groups formed late last year to tackle different themes deemed “matters of great relevance” by the Synod’s first session in October 2023. These groups will continue to meet through June 2025 but will provide an update on their progress at the second session in October.
The possibility of the admission of women to the diaconate will not be a topic during the upcoming assembly, the Instrumentum Laboris said.
The new document was presented at a July 9 press conference by Cardinals Mario Grech and Jean-Claude Hollerich, together with the special secretaries of the synodal assembly: Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa and Father Riccardo Battocchio.
“The Synod is already changing our way of being and living the Church regardless of the October assembly,” Hollerich said, pointing to testimonies shared in the most recent reports sent by bishops’ conferences.
The Oct. 2-27 gathering of the Synod on Synodality will mark the end of the discernment phase of the Church’s synodal process, which Pope Francis opened in 2021.
Participants in the fall meeting, including Catholic bishops, priests, religious, and laypeople from around the world, will use the Instrumentum Laboris as a guide for their “conversations in the Spirit,” the method of discussion introduced at the 2023 assembly. They will also prepare and vote on the Synod on Synodality’s advisory final document, which will then be given to the pope, who decides the Church’s next steps and if he wishes to adopt the text as a papal document or to write his own.
The third phase of the synod — after “the consultation of the people of God” and “the discernment of the pastors” — will be “implementation,” according to organizers.
Prominent topics
The 2024 Instrumentum Laboris also addresses the need for transparency to restore the Church’s credibility in the face of sexual abuse of adults and minors and financial scandals.
“If the synodal Church wants to be welcoming,” the document reads, “then accountability and transparency must be at the core of its action at all levels, not only at the level of authority.”
It recommends effective lay involvement in pastoral and economic planning, the publication of annual financial statements certified by external auditors, annual summaries of safeguarding initiatives, the promotion of women to positions of authority, and periodic performance evaluations on those exercising a ministry or holding a position in the Church.
“These are points of great importance and urgency for the credibility of the synodal process and its implementation,” the document says.
The greater participation of women in all levels of the Church, a reform of the education of priests, and greater formation for all Catholics are also included in the text.
Bishops’ conferences, it says, noticed an untapped potential for women’s participation in many areas of Church life. “They also call for further exploration of ministerial and pastoral modalities that better express the charisms and gifts the Spirit pours out on women in response to the pastoral needs of our time,” the document states.
Formation in listening is identified as “an essential initial requirement” for Catholics, as well as how to engage in the practice of “conversation in the Spirit,” which was employed in the first session of the Synod on Synodality.
Pope Francis and delegates at the Synod on Synodality at the conclusion of the assembly on Oct. 28, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
The document says the need for formation has been one of the most universal and strong themes throughout the synodal process. Interreligious dialogue also is identified as an important aspect of the synodal journey.
On the topic of the liturgy, the Instrumentum Laboris says there was “a call for adequately trained lay men and women to contribute to preaching the Word of God, including during the celebration of the Eucharist.”
“It is necessary that the pastoral proposals and liturgical practices preserve and make ever more evident the link between the journey of Christian initiation and the synodal and missionary life of the Church,” the document says. “The appropriate pastoral and liturgical arrangements must be developed in the plurality of situations and cultures in which the local Churches are immersed …”
How it was drafted
Dubbed the “Instrumentum Laboris 2,” the document released Tuesday has been in preparation since early June when approximately 20 experts in theology, ecclesiology, and canon law held a closed-door meeting to analyze around 200 synod reports from bishops’ conferences and religious communities responding to what the Instrumentum Laboris called “the guiding question” of the next stage of the Synod on Synodality: “How to be a synodal Church in mission?”
After the 10-day gathering, “an initial version” of the text was drafted based on those reports and sent to around 70 people — priests, religious, and laypeople — “from all over the world, of various ecclesial sensitivities and from different theological ‘schools,’” for consultation, according to the synod website.
The XVI Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, together with consultants of the synod secretariat, finalized the document.
According to the working tool, soliciting new reports and feedback after the consultation phase ended is “consistent with the circularity characterizing the whole synodal process.”
“In preparation for the Second Session, and during its work, we continue to address this question: how can the identity of the synodal People of God in mission take concrete form in the relationships, paths and places where the everyday life of the Church takes place?” it says.
The document says “other questions that emerged during the journey are the subject of work that continues in other ways, at the level of the local Churches as well as in the ten Study Groups.”
Expectations for final session
According to the guiding document, the second session of the Synod on Synodality can “expect a further deepening of the shared understanding of synodality, a better focus on the practices of a synodal Church, and the proposal of some changes in canon law (there may be yet more significant and profound developments as the basic proposal is further assimilated and lived.)”
“Nonetheless,” it continues, “we cannot expect the answer to every question. In addition, other proposals will emerge along the way, on the path of conversion and reform that the Second Session will invite the whole Church to undertake.”
The Instrumentum Laboris says, “Synodality is not an end in itself … If the Second Session is to focus on certain aspects of synodal life, it does so with a view to greater effectiveness in mission.”
In its brief conclusion, the text states: “The questions that the Instrumentum Laboris asks are: how to be a synodal Church in mission; how to engage in deep listening and dialogue; how to be co-responsible in the light of the dynamism of our personal and communal baptismal vocation; how to transform structures and processes so that all may participate and share the charisms that the Spirit pours out on each for the common good; how to exercise power and authority as service. Each of these questions is a service to the Church and, through its action, to the possibility of healing the deepest wounds of our time.”
“To the beloved people of Nicaragua: I encourage you to renew your hope in Jesus. Remember that the Holy Spirit always guides history toward higher designs,” Pope Francis said at the end of this Angelus address on Aug. 25. / Credit: Vatican Medi… […]
2 Comments
Saint John Lateran has significance for understanding what Catholic Christianity is about. What stands out is its mission to clearly state, without ambivalence Christ’s call for repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
The Lateran Basilica is where priests studying at pontifical institutions would be examined, as to whether they possessed the requirements for receiving priests’ faculties for hearing confession and granting absolution. After ordination. Not every priest may exercise that faculty. The exam was stringent [rigorous] and informative. Two religious order theologians ‘grilled me’ at length. A final question was, Who would you hold to greater adherence to Church teaching on moral responsibility and sin, the penitent or the priest? Thought briefly and answered, The priest. Both interrogators smiled indicating the correct response. The answer is consistent with Christ’s teaching, that more is expected from those to whom more is given.
We have an awesome responsibility in that regard, to penitent and Christ. That was then. I wonder what is now, what with Francis the First’s policy of downplaying rigor. Going so far as to insult rigorous priests. What in heaven’s name does this pontiff mean? Read Amoris Laetitia carefully and the answer is mitigation of the standards that make for sound moral judgment. Largely based on what consists of ‘manifest behavior’, not interior, conscientious disposition, or concrete circumstances. Otherwise why the crucifixion, and why the pouring out of grace for the forgiveness of sins?
Lo, in recent history the final tipping point for Cardinal Newman converting from Anglicanism to the Catholic faith was a comparable (but not fully equivalent) moment within the Anglican ecclesial communion (not apostolic, and therefore not a Church).
At issue was the 1841 Anglican proposal to establish a bishop in Jerusalem, where “there was not a single Anglican,” to gather-in the Lutherans and the Calvinists (and to possibly convert the Jews of which Newman was told “there are not half-a-dozen”)–whose congregating (synodally?) would be a matter of INDIFFERENCE–with Protestant bodies “allowing [their members] to put themselves under an Anglican Bishop, without formal renunciation of their errors or regard to the due reception of baptism and confirmation [….]”
“This was the third blow [like the early Arian and Monophysite shards], which finally shattered my faith in the Anglican Church [sic]. That Church was not only forbidding any sympathy of concurrence with the Church of Rome, but it actually was courting an intercommunion with Protestant Prussia and the heresy of the Orientals” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Part V).
Today, the disintegration of faith, culture, morals (!), and even civilization calls for bridges of all kinds. Even the best Vatican leadership and theologians of our entire two millennia would find this a most challenging high wire act…but don’t fidelity and coherent clarity still require swimming the Tiber?
Saint John Lateran has significance for understanding what Catholic Christianity is about. What stands out is its mission to clearly state, without ambivalence Christ’s call for repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
The Lateran Basilica is where priests studying at pontifical institutions would be examined, as to whether they possessed the requirements for receiving priests’ faculties for hearing confession and granting absolution. After ordination. Not every priest may exercise that faculty. The exam was stringent [rigorous] and informative. Two religious order theologians ‘grilled me’ at length. A final question was, Who would you hold to greater adherence to Church teaching on moral responsibility and sin, the penitent or the priest? Thought briefly and answered, The priest. Both interrogators smiled indicating the correct response. The answer is consistent with Christ’s teaching, that more is expected from those to whom more is given.
We have an awesome responsibility in that regard, to penitent and Christ. That was then. I wonder what is now, what with Francis the First’s policy of downplaying rigor. Going so far as to insult rigorous priests. What in heaven’s name does this pontiff mean? Read Amoris Laetitia carefully and the answer is mitigation of the standards that make for sound moral judgment. Largely based on what consists of ‘manifest behavior’, not interior, conscientious disposition, or concrete circumstances. Otherwise why the crucifixion, and why the pouring out of grace for the forgiveness of sins?
We read: “Why the crucifixion?” As in the flick, “Cool Hand Luke,” surely what we have here is simply a “failure to communicate.” Recalling how, on April 18, some fifty Anglican clergy celebrated a liturgy in St. John Lateran Archbasilica. https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2023/04/20/breaking-vatican-blames-failure-in-communication-for-anglican-service-in-popes-church-in-rome/
Lo, in recent history the final tipping point for Cardinal Newman converting from Anglicanism to the Catholic faith was a comparable (but not fully equivalent) moment within the Anglican ecclesial communion (not apostolic, and therefore not a Church).
At issue was the 1841 Anglican proposal to establish a bishop in Jerusalem, where “there was not a single Anglican,” to gather-in the Lutherans and the Calvinists (and to possibly convert the Jews of which Newman was told “there are not half-a-dozen”)–whose congregating (synodally?) would be a matter of INDIFFERENCE–with Protestant bodies “allowing [their members] to put themselves under an Anglican Bishop, without formal renunciation of their errors or regard to the due reception of baptism and confirmation [….]”
“This was the third blow [like the early Arian and Monophysite shards], which finally shattered my faith in the Anglican Church [sic]. That Church was not only forbidding any sympathy of concurrence with the Church of Rome, but it actually was courting an intercommunion with Protestant Prussia and the heresy of the Orientals” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Part V).
Today, the disintegration of faith, culture, morals (!), and even civilization calls for bridges of all kinds. Even the best Vatican leadership and theologians of our entire two millennia would find this a most challenging high wire act…but don’t fidelity and coherent clarity still require swimming the Tiber?