WRONG!
From a reader…
QUAERITUR:
I understand that before Vatican 2, only the priests distributed Holy Communion. There are conservative people who think that it is fine for lay men to be Eucharistic ministers if need be, but not women. While I don’t like seeing female Eucharistic ministers, from a spiritual perspective how can it be worse than lay men. They both are not priests, and it is the priests job. Would love to hear your opinion.
Your instinct is substantially correct. From the standpoint of the present law of the Church, if a lay person is legitimately deputed as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion (EMHC – they are not Eucharistic Ministers!), there is for the Novus Ordo no juridical reason according to which a woman distributing Communion is intrinsically worse than a man doing so. Canon 910 §2 simply speaks of an acolyte or “another member of the Christian faithful.”
There is, however, an historical reason why some traditional Catholics perceive a difference. Service in the sanctuary, especially the ministry of acolyte, developed within the male clerical cursus and had a close relationship to preparation for Holy Orders. That explains the traditional preference for males in roles closely associated with the altar. In the traditional Roman liturgical discipline, neither male nor female laypeople functioned as routine distributors of Holy Communion. Introducing lay EMHCs, male or female, into the 1962 Rite is contrary to its liturgical discipline and ethos.
As far as a theological reason is concerned, a lay man and a lay woman are equally incapable of acting as Ordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. That office belongs properly to the ordained. Nevertheless, a lay man, as a male, possesses a closer symbolic congruity with the sacred ministry because the ministerial priesthood is reserved by divine constitution to men only. Hence, the objection to a female extraordinary minister is not that she is less holy, worthy, or capable of reverence. It concerns the sacramental symbolism of the sanctuary. The priest acts in persona Christi capitis, and the traditional arrangement of ministers around the altar reflects and extends that masculine sacramental sign. A male lay minister, though not ordained, preserves that sign more closely. A female minister introduces a sign that cannot bear the same relation to the ordained priesthood. Let’s leave aside what certain Jesuits introduce.
Signs are important. Once we start chipping away as the signs, we erode our identity. You can see what has been done to the very concept of a sanctuary in a church, for example, through the iconoclastic (i.e., identity) war carried on by bishop and priest fanatics against Communion rails and their unblinking mania for filling what once was a sanctuary with women and girls. These are ultimately aimed at our Catholic identity.
Therefore, any lay person is a departure from the ideal, a problem exacerbated when lay distribution is unnecessary (most of the time). But the use of a woman entails an additional rupture in the traditional symbolic relationship between altar service and the male priesthood.
As averted just above, a serious problem is the routine use of any lay Extraordinary Minister when there is no genuine necessity. Redemptionis Sacramentum states (cf 154, 157-158) that bishops, priests and deacons are the ordinary ministers of Holy Communion and that extraordinary ministers are to be used only when sacred ministers are lacking, impeded, or the number of communicants would otherwise prolong Mass excessively. A merely brief prolongation is explicitly insufficient.
Thanks for answering this question.
For a deep dive into all the theological reasons why only men should serve in the sanctuary, see my book “Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion.”
https://osjustipress.com/products/ministers-of-christ
While I’m not particularly fond of the idea of distributing communion, there is one thing I’ve always wondered. Let’s say that woman is a Consecrated Virgin, a woman whom the Church mystically betrothed to Christ and set apart as a sacred person.
If it were a choice between a lay male EMHC or a Consecrated Virgin acting as EMHC, would it still be preferable for a lay male?
I thought that the primary reason for “Extraordinary Ministers” was to “save time,” which I guess is an important consideration when dealing with what must be a relatively unimportant part of the Mass. (Yes, sarcasm.) But then I watch all of the people on the altar receive, and give each other, Holy Communion under both species and think to myself, “How much time does this really save?”
I know I sound like a broken record but in college I was an EMHC. The only time I ever heard a priest give a criteria for an EMHC was in college. He said you must be a practicing Catholic, have been confirmed, and if married your marriage must be in the Church. I also remember being told by a priest that as an EMHC you are to be an “example”. Particularly in college there were certain temptations to avoid particularly on Saturday evening when you were supposed to be at Sunday Mass.
Parishes that I am familiar with the criteria seems to be all over the map. Over the years I prefer now to receive from either a priest or deacon which is one reason I have not been an EMHC in years.
Regarding L.’s comment, is the distribution of Holy Communion a part of the Mass, or is it an interruption? I ask this because I have seen an 18th century copy of a Mass booklet used in Liverpool that did not include the distribution of Holy Communion. (Someone, I don’t remember who, told me that the distribution of Holy Communion did not occur during Mass, but afterwards at that time.)
Now for my anecdote.
Before I began going to a diocesan TLM I went to a chapel operated by a well-thought of schismatic Benedictine. (I know he was well thought of because the local Bishop kept trying to get him to re-join the Diocese years before Summorum Pontificum, but this didn’t happen until afterwards and we then had another Bishop. Both of these Bishops spoke highly of him to me in brief post-Mass conversations and the latter-one went to his funeral.)
Anyway, there was an elderly woman there named Vinita who had converted from Methodism when she got married and at some point they had started going to an SSPX Mass in Florida. And like only a few us, she began going the diocesan TLM after the 2011 reconciliation, but soon because of age she stopped coming. In 2019, shortly after turning 100, she died. We only learned about it by chance as one of my friends just happened to stop by to see her only to learn she had died 3 days earlier.
I made it to the funeral and learned from her son-in-law that Vinita would not receive Holy Communion from any of the Nuns that regularly came to her nursing home to distribute it. (Apparently they were offended by this.) She would only receive from a priest regardless of the circumstances. When the son-in-law was telling me this, I looked to Father because I had been told that he had been regularly bringing her Holy Communion at the nursing home for several years, and Father just smiled.
This is, I suppose, is what the Vatican should mean when it argues the Church needs to meet people where they are. That is, have priests bring Holy Communion to people where they are.
This is the same rationale I’ve always heard for why altar servers are traditionally boys. The role is one that should be performed by a cleric, but in the absence of sufficient clerics, any Catholic male can be substituted because he is a potential cleric.
When traveling I would sometimes encounter parishes which refer to EMHCs as “Eucharistic Ministers” (EMs) and when I would subsequently email the pastor to respectfully note the mistake I would never receive a response and never subsequently saw a correction. I can only sadly suspect that it’s intentional and not an oversight. I can appreciate how many members of the laity would not recognize the difference and just accept the term being used by their parish, but why would a pastor deliberately allow his parishioners to be misled? Why would they apparently want to elevate the laity serving in this role to a position similar to the priest who is, in fact, by virtue of his priestly ordination THE Eucharistic Minister at the Mass.
@ProfessorCover
As a Trent-acostal I quote thusly:
“The holy council wishes indeed that at each mass the faithful who are present should communicate, not only in spiritual desire but also by the sacramental partaking of the Eucharist, that thereby they may derive from this most holy sacrifice a more abundant fruit…” Session 22 Ch. 6
The Latin has “in singulis missis,” unmistakably meaning “contained within” and in no-wise interpretable as para-liturgical.
Re: Communion after Mass, that was because (in some places) Father and the deacons, etc., would receive during Mass, and communicants would receive over on the side, either during the end of Mass or after Mass.
But Trent tried to get rid of after-Mass Communion, although it is still the time to hand out sacramentals in Europe, in many places. (Like blessed fruit or such.)
Since people usually did not receive frequently (ie, more than once or a few times per year), this was a thing in cities where either they wanted to make sure that people receiving during non-holiday Masses really were prepared, or because there were more levitation and ecstasies in some cases. Also probably to keep control over propriety of men and women, or other concerns of that kind.
I note that at St. Patrick’s here in Columbus, the tabernacle has a ‘back door’ so that priests could get the Sacrament during Mass. Communion would be given out throughout Mass, except during the Consecration. Something that St. Pius X ended.
Speaking of a “back door” when I was a little kid (c. 1973) I remember when Eucharist was distributed at the parish I attended. The parish had three or four priests and at least two other priests would come in to help the priest celebrating Mass distribute Holy Communion. I am wondering if there was a “back door” for the priests to enter the sacristy (the extra priests didn’t process in) which at many parishes is located behind the altar.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this procedure was “normal” in many dioceses back then depending on the pastor and probably the local ordinary. Seeing EMHC’s for the first time in the mid-1970s was a little weird, particularly for my mother.