Photo ~ Anoointing of the sick

Revisiting the Anointing of the Sick: Some Problems Today
The Church needs to clarify the administration of the sacrament of the anointing of the sick for a number of reasons.

I have witnessed a number of other quite common practices that are also difficult to square with the norms in Pope Paul VI’s Sacram Unctionem Infirmorum (On the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick) and the subsequent Ordo regarding Pastoral Care of the Sick (PCS).

For instance, there is the abuse of so-called healing liturgies in which anyone in attendance who is ill may receive the sacrament of the anointing of the sick without qualification.

There is often no requirement stated that the illness must be serious in the objective sense proposed in the Ordo, and regardless, there would be no way of checking even if that norm were stated.

Anyone can be anointed whether they have a terminal illness, chronic back pain, or headache. The norms are, in any meaningful sense, simply by-passed.

Then, there is the abuse where the priest simply anoints all the Catholics in a hospital or in a nursing home, regardless of their medical condition.

I once had a pastor who went to the local nursing home every thirty days and anointed all the Catholics.

He told me that it saved him from getting up and anointing the dying since they had already been anointed within the past thirty days, a norm which I could not locate in any place but his own mind.

Following Vatican II, the significance of the change in the name of the sacrament, and the timing of its administration, was drilled into the thinking of seminarians and priests alike.

It was no longer called “extreme unction” (the sacrament for the dying), and it was now to be administered as soon as possible in any serious illness.

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