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Catholic World News News Feature

Vatican officials highlight continuity in new papal document March 13, 2007

At a March 13 press briefing in Rome, introducing Pope Benedict’s apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, two leading Vatican officials called attention to the continuity between the document and previous papal statements.

Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, the secretary-general of the Synod of Bishops, said that Sacramentum Caritatis should be read as a new contribution to the series of statements that includes Ecclesia de Eucharistia and Mane Nobsicum Domine, both by Pope John Paul II, “recalling the urgent need to include Eucharistic life as part of everyday life.”

Cardinal Angelo Scola, the Patriarch of Venice, took note of the similarity between the title of this papal document and that of Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. Together, he said, the two documents highlight “the holy insistence over these two years of his pontificate on the truth of love." In the document, Cardinal Scola said, Pope Benedict reminds the faithful of “the inherent unity of the rite of the Mass, which must also be expressed in the way in which the Liturgy of the Word is practiced."

Another aspect of the document to which the cardinal called attention was the Pope’s insistence that Catholics should bring the truth of the Eucharist into every aspect of their lives, including public activities. “In this context,” the cardinal said, “the responsibility of Christians in public and political life becomes particularly important.” In answer to a reporter’s question he said that Catholics who support political stands that are incompatible with Church teaching should not receive the Eucharist; Cardinal Scola did not directly answer the reporter’s question as to whether priests should deny them Communion.