Shrines Urged: Balance Popular Piety with Liturgy, encourage Confessions

August 13.2011) In a message to the rectors of Catholic shrines throughout the world, the Vatican has emphasized that popular piety must not supersede the Church's official liturgy. The message from the Congregation for Clergy also strongly encourages the rectors of shrines to place a heavy emphasis on the sacrament of Penance. The Vatican letter—signed by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza and Archbishop Celso Morga Iruzubieta, the prefect and secretary, respectively, of the Congregation for Clergy—strongly affirms the importance of shrines as oases of spiritual strength and renewal. The letter welcomes the various forms of popular piety that are found at shrines, but calls for a proper balance. "The personal practice of expressions of popular piety cannot replace participation in liturgical worship. The Vatican document urges officials to make the sacrament of reconciliation readily available. For that purpose, the letter notes, "it is necessary to bring about and to intensify, where possible, the constant presence of priests who, with a humble and welcoming soul, give themselves generously to the hearing of sacramental confessions." While encouraging pious devotions of all sorts, the shrines should always ensure that the Eucharist is recognized as the "source and summit of the Christian life". The Congregation for Clergy urges clerics working at shrines to welcome those who come looking for direction in life and especially those who are thinking about entering or re-entering the Catholic Church. The letter from the Congregation for Clergy is dated August 15: the feast of the Assumption. But it was released by the Vatican on August 12.