Pope to Mark 24th Anniversary, Change Rosary
October 14, 2002 10:02 AM ET By Philip Pullella
From Reuters via Amy Welborn's page

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope John Paul will mark his 24th anniversary as pontiff Wednesday by changing the rosary -- the most universal and commonly known Catholic method of praying -- for the first time in nine centuries.

According to Vatican sources, the Pope Wednesday will issue a document proposing that Catholics meditate on five more events in Christ's life in the new rosary, adding a further layer of spirituality to the age-old prayer.

Changing one of Christianity's most fundamental prayers after nearly a millennium will be a typical way for the 82-year-old Pope to crown 24 years of a pontificate marked by bold initiatives sometimes taken against the advice of aides.
Does this bother anyone else? As much as I think this pope is a great man, I really think he has no business changing or adding to the rosary. It sets a dangerous precedent and it'll begin to kill the devotion to the rosary.

He cannot make these additions based on revelation so they'll have to be based on theological refllection. At once you let theology begin to shape prayers, devotions and the like, that begins their demise, because they lose the untouchable simple devotional quality that they once had and become the pervue of theologians. They other thing is that the rosary itself, like the chaplet of divine mercy, is a spiritual gift and thus an object of and for meditiation. By meditating on the rosary we can gain new spiritual insights, because it is a spiritual gift. But when you add to it, you've, by default constrained its ability to provide new insights because you've circumcribed it with an particular interpretation that then extinguishes other insights.

But then, the report says that he wants to add more meditations on Christ's life. That's never a bad thing, but . . . I guess we'll see.