I got an email from something called the Real Presence Coalition. I tried the website, but the link didn’t work. I have sympathy, but I don’t have more knowledge from their site.
The email, however, said that, using Pew surveys about Eucharistic faith among US Catholics (you will recall that it those results were not rosy) the RPC did their own survey to find out what might have caused the lack of faith in the Eucharist and what might be done to counteract the trend.
This is what I read. Be prepared for a COMPLETE SHOCK THAT WILL SHOCK YOU.
The RPC survey revealed that the loss of faith in the Real Presence has been precipitated by a combination of factors, including
1) Receiving the Eucharist in the hand;
2) Scandal of offering the Eucharist to public sinners who reject Catholic teaching;
3) Lack of reverence on the part of both the laity and priests;
4) Lack of solid catechesis; and
5) Lost sense of the supernatural.
I KNOW, RIGHT?!? Who’d’a ever thought that something like Communion in the hand would do anything but nearly instantly destroy faith in the Eucharist and devotion and reverence before the Eucharist??!?
Mind, you I am not picking on the RPC. They are like the kid pointing at the Emperor. Good for that kid!
They also posted – and this is great – what the respondents thought might help to promote faith and reverence for the Eucharist.
Again, prepare to be SHOCKED! SHOCKED!!
Survey respondents also offered a number of specific recommendations to U.S. bishops on how to restore belief in the Real Presence, including:
1) Encouraging the practice of receiving the Eucharist on the tongue while kneeling;
2) Catechizing the faithful;
3) Promoting greater reverence for the Eucharist;
3) Eliminating the use of Extraordinary Ministers;
4) Withholding the Eucharist from public sinners; and
5) Increasing Eucharistic events such as Adoration and Benedictions.
HA! Can you imagine actually telling people what the Church teaches and then – in their sight and as they watch – have the Church’s pastors and teachers behave as if they, too, believed it all?
Imagine for a second, trying “reverence”, as in Eucharistic devotions like EXPOSITION and BENEDICTION… sort of as if the Eucharist was something important!
Can you get your mind around how backwardist it all is?
Get rid of Communion in the hand?
Get rid of extraordinary ministers of Communion (the technical title)?
NOT giving the Eucharistic higgledy-piggledy to fierce promotors of the murder of babies?
Can you imagine… hang on… kneeling?
Nothing they have said is new, either about why faith in the Eucharist is a disaster or how it can be reversed. Nothing.
HOWEVER… they said it! Good for them.
We need more and more and more of this until things start the change. The demographic sinkhole is still expanding and taking swathes out of our ambient. We need some serious work. We need…
Tradition.
We need The Obvious™.
Also, GO TO CONFESSION.
That’s a good starting place. Let’s start with our own state of life and state of soul.
It’s almost like you have been saying this for years. Shocking! Better late than never.
Sounds like all the things that are causing the loss of faith are EXACTLY what we are subjected to here in Chile. Oh yes other places too for sure.
Here my family is denied Communion unless:
We receive in the hand.
And
NEVER….. ever… ever… kneeling.
Two Additional Hidden Factors:
1. Loss of the distinction between the priest’s consumption of the eucharistic specieS as consummation of the acceptable Sacrifice Offered to the Father and the laity’s reception of the eucharistic species (s) as the fruit of the accepted sacrifice.
2. The widespread belief that the laity’s communion is someThing TAKEN that they have a RIGHT to, rather than the gift of a Person received that they need to make themselves worthy of (through grace) even as they are unworthy.
Oh dear. I took the survey, and I think those were my exact answers. I guess it’s nice that so many laity are on board – I’m not sure how priests and bishops don’t see the writing on the wall yet unless they are incredibly dense or truly malicious.
And we now have decades of trad parishes where somehow those who can’t kneel due to age, infirmity, injury, or pregnancy do still get Communion, almost like using those folks as an excuse is bovine excrement…
I forwarded this to many email addresses within the diocese of Fresno pastoral office formerly known as the chancery.
Pray God they read it and act on it. But it is Fresno so there’s not much hope. Excellent article
I was raised in a very conservative branch of Lutheranism (Wisconsin Synod, for those who know about the branches of Lutheranism). We learned not just what we believed about the Lutheran concept of a real presence, but about the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and The Real Presence. We received Lutheran “communion” hosts kneeling and on the tongue, and because of their insistence on both kinds, we received the chalice but could not touch it. So when I went to a Catholic family wedding and saw them queuing up like a fast food drive through, standing, receiving in the hand, and grabbing the chalice from a woman who held it in her hands, I was shocked and scandalized! And I was a LUTHERAN! I remember thinking, “I thought our pastor told us that Catholics believe the bread changes into Christ’s body and the wine changes into Christ’s blood! Apparently he was wrong!”
I have been feeling optimistic about the Church lately, probably because I sense a movement from parish priests and especially the laity for more faith in the Eucharist. Maybe it is just local. Both NO parishes where I leave have adoration, and one has confessions before weekday masses. The other only has what seems to be standard late Saturday afternoon confession. The only things I would add to the recommendations is (1) requiring the celebrant to hear confessions for at least 30 minutes before Mass. Was not this the standard practice at one time? And (2) requiring the celebrant to read the last Gospel at the end of Mass.
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I cannot go to my local parish church where the priests act all holy, but will only give Communion on the hand (they say for health reasons because the priests are old–though there are more viruses on the hands than on the tongue). When I was refused Communion (and so was my 84 yo disabled mother), right before me a woman actually kneeled and lifted her hands up to receive Communion. Bizarre, but I blame the priest for that as well. Of course the diocese through its vicar of clergy wrote me back that I have a right to receive on the tongue, but there is nothing they can do about it because there are not enough priests in the diocese, though the same vicar of clergy demoted two conservative priests in the diocese from pastor at one parish to administrator in another parish because there were too many complaints against them by liberal parishioners (one was even required to do “pastoral retraining”).
One priest in the diocese started fixing some problems in his new parish by trying to educate the “extraordinary ministers.” It turns out they, daily Mass attendees, were carrying the Eucharist around with them throughout the day instead of immediately going to the supposedly homebound people they were visiting. When the priest kept asking his parishioners at all the Sunday Masses to let the parish know who needs Communion brought to a family member, it turned out only one person did. Therefore, the priest implemented a policy that only he or the parish deacon will bring Communion to the homebound, so the complaints against him by the “extraordinary ministers” started pouring into the diocese. And this is a priest who regularly will not just bring Communion to the homebound or elderly, he will celebrate Mass at their house with, of course, prior confession of that person and any family members present. This priest is also a handyman, so he fixes his poorer or older parishioners’ electricity, water heaters, plumbing etc., so they don’t have to pay anyone on their meager income. Therefore I don’t blame many priests who don’t do much because they are immediately “put in their place” by diocesan officials supporting the tiny percentage of parishioners who are liberal, obnoxious, and vindictive towards any priest who does not do what they want.
Another example of what ProfessorCover is referring to above – in a parish I formerly belonged to in Maine, they are starting a fundraising effort to install a communion rail at the principal church of the diocese. The same church also hosts one of the few TLM’s available in that diocese.
During the Protestant Revolt a priest was told “if you Catholics believe what you preach you would walk to receive your Communion on your knees.”
Great survey results and suggestions. But trying to get the USCCB to make substantial changes is like trying to put the ocean into a hole on the beach. Some individual bishops try, but it’s like them fighting city hall. They are usually the ones punished today because they are rigid and unbending. I agree we need to do what can can but it will take a divine intervention to fix this mess.
A few months ago at our SSPX chapel, one of the servers, about 17 years old, refused communion. His parents and all his siblings were there.
Obviously I have no idea what unconfessed sin prompted him to accept embarrassment rather than commit sacrelige, but I can only say I envy him his faith
Did not Monsignor Nicola Bux write a book on this very topic many moons ago? How to go to Mass and not lose your faith or something similar?
My prayers for your finding a new place to live in Rome.
Yes, and here’s something simple and actionable we can actually do about it- check out “kneel”:
https://www.kneel-dominusest.com