Ratzingerino: Restore the Rail

"...they wrapped the prefect in swaddling cappas and placed him in a throne-chair...."

Warmest tidings for an Extraordinary (Use) Nativitate to one and all.

Speaking of which, in an interview with a Spanish outlet following his recent appointment as the global church's Liturgy Czar, Cardinal Antonio Cañizares echoed the Pope's recent move -- and the stated mind of his now-lieutenant at the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments -- endorsing the value of receiving the Eucharist kneeling and on the tongue:

Q: Benedict XVI has reiterated in some instances the propriety of receiving communion kneeling and in the mouth. Is it something important, or is it a mere matter of form?

Cañizares: - No, it is not just a matter of form. What does it mean to receive communion in the mouth? What does it mean to kneel before the Most Holy Sacrament? What dies it mean to kneel during the consecration at Mass? It means adoration, it means recognizing the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; it means respect and an attitude of faith of a man who prostrates before God because he knows that everything comes from Him, and we feel speechless, dumbfounded, before the wondrousness, his goodness, and his mercy. That is why it is not the same to place the hand, and to receive communion in any fashion, than doing it in a respectful way; it is not the same to receive communion kneeling or standing up, because all these signs indicate a profound meaning. What we have to grasp is that profound attitude of the man who prostrates himself before God, and that is what the Pope wants.

The sixth congregation head named thus far by B16, with the Spaniard's long-expected move to Rome now in the can, attention is beginning to turn in earnest toward the pontiff's next round of Curial shuffling.

Three heads of the second-tier pontifical councils might be serving well past their 75th birthdays, but the primary focus rests squarely on the all-important Congregation for Bishops, where Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re will reach the retirement age on 30 January.

Head of the dicastery that recommends episcopal appointments to the Pope since 2000 -- and a masterfully-effective Sostituto in the model of his mentor Benelli prior to that -- it's been indicated in some quarters that the wait for a new prefect might be relatively brief... then again, it's no secret that, these days, more things than not are moving at a snail's pace in B16's Vatican.

At the recent rollout of the papal message for 2009's World Day of Peace (1 January), the Peace Czar Cardinal Renato Martino said that the pontiff's long-awaited, repeatedly-delayed "social encyclical" Caritas in Veritate was now being targeted for release shortly after the first of the year.

Still doing double-duty at the helm of both the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace and Migrants and Itinerants, the former UN observer himself turned 75 in November... 2007.

PHOTO: Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest

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