The following is excerpted from the article, “Popular Devotional Practices: Basic Questions and Answers,” published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, (03 Copyright © by United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) and a continuation from last week. The full text can be found at www.usccb.org/bishops/devprac.htm 

5. Why are there so many different forms of popular devotion? 

Since popular devotions arise in response to the spiritual needs of the culture in which they take shape, the degree to which any particular devotion is practiced will vary over time and according to the culture. Pope Paul VI explained that the Church "does not bind herself to any particular expression of an individual cultural epoch or to the particular anthropological ideas underlying such expressions. The Church understands that certain outward religious expressions, while perfectly valid in themselves, may be less suitable to men and women of different ages and cultures." Some devotional practices evidently correspond more closely to the spiritual needs of a certain people at a certain time than others. Popular devotions are not a matter in which "one size fits all." We must be aware that in our Church today in the United States there are various ethnic groups who are living in different cultural contexts, and we must be sensitive to the fact that these groups often find that some devotional practices meet their spiritual needs better than others. 

Sometimes a certain amount of adaptation is required to make a popular devotion suitable for people in another place and time. For example, the Stations of the Cross began as the practice of pious pilgrims to Jerusalem who would retrace the final journey of Jesus Christ to Calvary. Later, for the many who wanted to pass along the same route but could not make the trip to Jerusalem, a practice developed that eventually took the form of the fourteen stations currently found in almost every church. Similarly, the 150 Hail Mary's that were recited for the rosary were an adaptation of the medieval monastic practice of reciting the 150 psalms in the Psalter. 

To be continued...