2023-08-10 16:01:00
August 10, 2023 / 9:01am
The Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Fernando Ocáriz, has published a message in which it calls its members to persevere in filial obedience and unity, after Pope Francis made public new canonical changes that affect this ecclesial reality.
As detailed in the letter, these changes introduce modifications “in continuity with what is established in Preach the gospelon the reform of the Roman Curia, and the Motu Proprio To protect charisma”.
“I am writing these words to share with you that we accept these provisions of the Holy Father with sincere filial obedience, and to ask you that we all remain very united in this as well,” the note begins.
In this way, Bishop Ocáriz adds, “we thus follow the spirit in which Saint Josemaría and his successors lived in the face of any decision of the Pope related to Opus Dei. Since the Work is a reality of God and of the Church, the Holy Spirit guides us at all times”.
The Prelate warns that the new changes in Canon Law, known this week, must be taken into account “in the adaptation and updating of the statutes of the Work, which has been underway for a year.”
As a summary of the nature of these changes, it specifies that “the modifications established in these canons refer to the general law on personal prelatures.”
Regarding the figure of the laity, “opus Dei’s raison d’être”, it is noted that “they are faithful of their dioceses, like any other Catholic. In the case of the Work, moreover, members of this supernatural family, thanks to a specific vocational call”, adds the Prelate.
faculty of incardination
For his part, the rector of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross and consultant to the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, Luis Felipe Navarro, explains in an article published in All of them the main novelties of Motu proprio met this week.
In his opinion, there are two: “It is provided that the personal prelatures are assimilated, without identifying themselves, to the clerical associations of Pontifical Law endowed with the power to incardinate; and it is recalled that the laity obtain their own parish priest and their own Ordinary through their domicile and quasi-domicile”.
Regarding clerical associations with the power to incardinate, Navarro recalls that they are regulated by canon 302, which states: “Clerical are those associations of the faithful that are under the direction of clerics, make the exercise of the sacred order their own and are recognized as such by the competent authority”.
In his opinion, this precept “does not explain everything that clerical associations are, or wanted to be” and “in it a technical concept of clerical association is forged that is distinguished from clerical associations.”
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The clerical associations were “endowed with a strong missionary character that required the exercise of Holy Orders to carry out this mission of evangelization”, so they had to have a public character, he continues. And, “taking into account the role of the ordained ministry, it was foreseen that the government would fall on priests.”
Over the years, Navarro explains, “some clerical associations felt the need to be able to incardinate some or all of their members, depending on the case, to ensure the stability of their charism” or the operability. In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI allowed the Congregation for the Clergy to grant the power to incardinate clerical associations that requested it.
In February 2022, through the By motion proper to determine certain competences, these associations are included among the incardinating entities. Currently there are several entities of this type, both autonomous and more or less linked to movements, according to the rector of the Holy Cross.
Situation of the laity with respect to their dioceses
Luis Felipe Navarro states that the last Motu proprio confirms that the faithful of the personal prelatures also legally belong to the dioceses by reason of “domicile or quasi-domicile”.
“This is a provision of a general nature whose purpose is to guarantee that each faithful has someone to turn to to receive the sacraments and the Word of God,” he specifies. For them, as a general rule, the territorial criterion is used.
However, a faithful can “have several own Ordinaries and parish priests at the same time, depending on the place of residence” or for other types of criteria, as in the case of the military or personal parishes.
That is, the faithful can go to the Ordinary or parish priest by territory or to the one that corresponds to him by other criteria.
“In this area it is clear that the faithful enjoy great freedom. He can choose for the celebration of some sacraments the parish priest or the Ordinary among the different possibilities offered by the Law ”, he concludes.
Nicolás de Cárdenas is a Spanish journalist specialized in socio-religious information. Since July 2022 he is a correspondent for ACI Prensa in Spain.
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