A fisherman´s rod!
Many years ago, as a young priest traveling in Europe, I encountered an unusual ceremony and have never seen it since. Outside the confessional, in a semicircular formation, knelt the penitents, one after the other, as they came from receiving absolution. A long, slender pole was affixed to the confessor’s Dutch door. Periodically his hand would take the pole and move it randomly over the heads of the kneeling penitents, finally tapping one of them on the shoulder. With that, the selected penitent blessed himself and departed.
This procedure continued until all had been tapped and thereby dismissed. I was told that the pole was called the “Fisherman’s Rod†and served to indicate that an indulgence had been granted to the penitent, having performed his penance on his knees and patiently waited for the Rod to send him on his way.
Can you tell me where and when this practice was commonly in vogue?
To answer your question, I called Father Cyprian Berens, O.F.M., who spent some years as a confessor at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome.
Father Cyprian told me that until the time of Pope Paul VI, there was attached to the doors of all the confessionals in the four major basilicas a rod that looked something like a fishing pole.
Confessors in these basilicas have their faculties from the Apostolic Penitentiary which has charge of all matters of the internal forum—both sacramental and non-sacramental. Among its responsibilities is directing things concerning the usage and granting of indulgences.
Confessors in these basilicas were able to grant an indulgence to anyone who asked for it by kneeling outside the confessional and waiting for a tap on the head or shoulders with the rod.
Among explanations of the practices were ideas that the one asking the indulgence sought a kind of spiritual knighthood or wanted to offer himself or herself to God in the spirit of sacrifice.
Under Pope Paul VI, there was a complete revision of indulgences and a new Enchiridion of Indulgences was published.
Father Cyprian speculated that this practice in the basilicas had become a kind of curiosity or novelty and that this became a reason for eliminating it.
The Heroic Act
Many years ago, as a child of 11 or 12, I read a book on Fatima. At the end of the book was a pledge called a heroic act where persons pledged to give all the indulgences they earned during life and after death to the souls in purgatory.
I made this act and I have never seen anything about this since and I can’t find the book it was in. Do you know anything about it?
There is indeed a practice of piety called the Heroic Act. It has been encouraged by the Theatine Order. It is called heroic because of the complete selflessness involved in the practice. According to T.C. O’Brien in the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Religion, persons who make the heroic act offer to God any and all indulgences they might gain, as well as all expiatory works and all prayers offered for them after death.
The Heroic Act should not be confused with St. Louis Marie de Montfort’s act of total consecration to Mary or the offering made by “victim souls.â€
De Montfort urged that the most perfect devotion to Mary was in consecrating self entirely to her, and Jesus through her, becoming a slave of Mary. That means completely consecrating self to Mary for all eternity—body, soul, spiritual and material possessions, the atoning value and merits of our good actions and the right to dispose of them, past, present and future.
The act of “victim souls†is to accept suffering without reservation in union with the self-offering of Christ in atonement for sin. O’Brien remarks that this offering is not to be made lightly or easily permitted by a spiritual director.
I would say the same of the Heroic Act and total consecration. They should not be spur-of-the-moment actions but thoughtful and mature acts.
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