So, meditating on the Transfiguration is tampering with the Rosary. Meditating on the Wedding Feast at Cana where Our Blessed Mother first said to the stewards, and has said to her children for the last 2,000 years, “Do whatever He tells you,” is also tampering with the Rosary.
A history of the Rosary shows that it was the result of “tampering” with the Liturgy of the Hours.
Father Richard John Neuhaus from First Things magazine found these early reports hard to believe, and told The Chicago Tribune that the Pope was not likely to alter the Rosary. "That he would suggest," said Neuhaus "or even declare some kind of official change to the Rosary is totally atypical, totally out of character." Neuhaus then said that the Pope does not have the authority to mandate changes in such a prayer.1
Father Neuhaus is correct that a Pope cannot mandate such changes, but he is mistaken to claim that the Pope's change of the Rosary would be "out of character" for this Pontiff of post-Conciliar aggiornamento. Even the secular press recognizes John Paul II as a man with a passion for setting papal precedents.