Priest uses a Communion dispenser

Posted on 5 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

So I conclude a brief pastoral nap and open my mail. BAMMO I’m instantly awake at the sight of

“Priest uses a Communion dispenser”

Clicking through I find….

What goes on inside the head of such a priest?

I wrote about this thing back in 2009. HERE

Posted in Liberals, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, You must be joking! | Tagged
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ASK FATHER: “take” Communion instead of “receive”? Wherein Fr. Z rants.

Posted on 5 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

In light of your recent question about “First Eucharist ” I was wondering about something else heard frequently. When referring to reception of the Blessed Sacrament some people say they are going to “take” Communion. When I first ran in to this I thought it was little kid misspeak, as the children would tell me how they are going to “take First Communion,” but then I noticed more and more people using the phrase. I was taught we “receive” Communion (kneeling, on the tongue) out of respect for Our Lord and Creator who is giving Himself to us in the most Blessed Sacrament. ”Take” seems like wildly inappropriate terminology conjuring up images of buffet Communion etc.

I’m guessing the origin of “take” is Matthew 26:26 “take and eat,” which seems like a misunderstanding of the passages and another attempt to undermine the Real Presence. Is my worry in this misplaced?

Yes, this is a problem.

No, I don’t think that most people who say “take” are up to something nefarious.

Most Catholics these days have dreadful language skills and can barely make distinctions anymore.  Furthermore, they have been poorly catechized and their catechesis may have included all manner of sloppy though and language.

Our Catholic language, common parlance, has been massively eroded over the decades.

The erosion has been caused by a plethora of forces, including declining quality of basic education in both secular and Catholic schools, the melting of the brain by constant exposure to what is artificial, etc.

This is across the board.

We are in serious trouble.

Libs have pretty much won, by taking over education (as Gramsci advocated).  Schools now churn out waves of – well- dummies, who haven’t been taught how to learn, how to think, how to speak, how to write.  They are the perfect golems for the libs overarching projects to tear down the pillars and bonds of society and remake something different, some lib utopia.   For example, is what was called “civics” taught any more?  Nope.  Hence, the young “skulls full of mush” get out of school and become the hapless prey of those who know and control the processes by which things get down.  And for their social and political thoughts… no, that’s too precise… notions, they line up like lemming on the pre-defined paths trodden in sit-coms and comedic rants.  Off to the cliffs they dash… dragging the rest of us along.

Am I wrong?

Back to “take”.

In my previous post, I wrote about how the meanings of words can drift and change over time.  Words acquire new meanings while loosing others.  It is a pretty much inexorable process in living, vernacular languages.  It is interesting to note that immigrant communities, separated from their motherland, will often preserve older accents and what come to be archaic usages when compared to how the language is shifting back in the motherland.  I have in mind, for example, some pockets of German speakers in Minnesota or Russians and Ukrainians in Canada.  The French speakers of Quebec have an accent that hearkens to France of the 18th c.  Creoles like Gullah are found all over.  But I digress.

Let’s think about “take”.   Look it up in a dictionary and you will find some 127 possible applications, including common idioms.  However, an archaic use of “take”, still perhaps used in some circles, is “eat”.  “Will you take something?” is “Will you eat something?”    Also, in British and American usage, “take” can mean “to receive”.

When we look at Matthew 26:26 (and Synoptics and Corinthians) we find that the verbs are “take” and “eat”.  In Greek, that “take” is from lambano: which in Biblical usage also has quite a few possible meanings, which include, as you might guess, “to receive”.  In some sense it means, “make something one’s own”.

That’s the fancy stuff.

However, in modern common parlance, “take” means something more like, “reach out and grasp something”, if you – ehem – take my meaning.  See how “receive… grasp… understand” can all fit into that “take”?  “Get it”?

Hearing certain language and seeing certain gestures go… ehem… hand in hand.

Gestures mean something too.  If for decades people have heard “take take take” and seen their fellows stick their hands out in a taking manner (even though they are receiving) their understanding of what is being “taken” is going to shift.  Who knows what most Catholics “grasp” of the Eucharist?

I’m not sanguine.  Most Catholics today are, I think, unwitting immanentists.  If pressed, they would admit of the transcendent dimension of worship – if it were explained to them.  But they would never think of it on their own.  That’s what our “worship” and preaching and teaching has produced, in tandem with the prevailing pressures of the world, the flesh and the Devil.

Going on…

Gestures and words have meanings that change because they are signs of something.  That is going to apply to the Blessed Sacrament as well: the words we use and the gestures we apply in regard to the Eucharist will affect what people believe.   Lex orandi – Lex Credendi.  The way we pray and the liturgical gestures we make have a reciprocal relationship with what we believe.

If we believe a certain thing about the Eucharist, we will pray and treat It in a certain way.  If our prayers change, our handling of the Eucharist will modify.  Vice versa.

Of course libs want to change our terms and our gestures!

We should insist on clear terms and clear gestures.

We should insist on “receive” and “reception” of Communion.

We should promote the recovery of reception of Holy Communion directly on the tongue while kneeling.

We should move to ad orientem worship.

We need more Latin, which has more precision that can be explained.

We need more traditional devotional prayers of yore, which are rich in meaningful vocabulary and concepts.

All our gestures and words during Holy Mass have their transformative meanings.  The whole package is our heritage and patrimony, which includes the story – like the family history – of who we are as Catholics, our Catholic identity.

We must reclaim and renew are Catholic identity.

 

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Hard-Identity Catholicism, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Our Catholic Identity, Pò sì jiù, The future and our choices, Wherein Fr. Z Rants | Tagged , , ,
13 Comments

How the Left wins.

Posted on 5 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

One thing’s for sure: conservatives and traditionalists are lousy at organizing and fighting back in the public square. In fact, too many times they turn on each other, which makes the Enemy cheer us on.

The Left is good at setting aside small differences for the sake of a larger goal – which usually has to do with destroying something good, true and beautiful. They even can work with enemies, as in the case of the inexplicable alliance the Left seems to have with radical Islam (cf. Andrew McCarthy’s book US HERE – UK HERE).

One of the things one learns from a) coming from a state where a caucus system is in place, or b) working within an organization that follows rules of order, is that c) to govern you have to show up and that d) to take control you have to use – or change – the rules.

I read a piece at PJ Media by J. Christian Adams which was disturbing, because it is dead on target.   This concerns mostly secular politics, but try to imagine this dynamic with the Church, universal and local.

The Left Transforms America [the Church] by Transforming the Rules

Others have used the term “post-constitutional” to describe the current era in which we live.  Most of us remember a time not long ago when the Constitution and the Rule of Law weren’t under open attack by so many institutions.

What do I mean by post-constitutional? There are couple of characteristics.

Law is used by those in power – often bureaucrats – to advance their ideological views through their power.  Law is no longer a fixed, largely agreed upon principle.  Instead it is becoming something elastic, subjective, defined by the latest best argument cooked up at Harvard Law School or Yale.

In the good old days, law was the great leveler.  We could all agree on the basics.  Everybody essentially agreed that election law, my field, was designed to ensure the integrity of the process.  [Think of A Man For All Seasons and More’s speech to Roper about law and the Devil.]

If we learned that large number of noncitizens, aliens, for example, were registering to vote – something I’ll discuss shortly – then all sides, Democrat, independent and Republican, would look for fixes.  Nobody would cook up excuses to defend the practice, excuse the practice or preserve alien voting.  It would be confronted and fixed.

But now, law professors and the academy view law as a means to keep and enhance power.

Law schools and law professors sometimes seem busier dismantling the Constitution because of their dislike of it and the people who wrote it, than they are teaching what it actually says.  After all, why teach what it actually says when you aim to replace it?

Do I overstate the case? Is this fanciful? Is it a conspiratorial fantasy that enemies of the Constitution are seeking to replace it and Machiavellian bureaucrats and lawyers manipulate the law to achieve partisan ends?

In 2010 when I left the Justice Department, I thought such a claim might have been hard to swallow.  But the perpetrators of these views have obliged us by being very explicit in the last few years.

Enemies of the Constitution are now hiding in plain sight.  Let me briefly note two examples (there are many, many others).

Who can forget the editorial by Georgetown Law Professor Louis Seidman in the New York Times called “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution.”  After all, as he put it, “a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries and knew nothing of our present situation and thought it was ok to own slaves disagreed” with what progressives want to do.  This is in the New York Times by a Georgetown Law professor.

Then, getting closer to my area of expertise – election law – there was a law review article in the Stanford Law and Policy Review by an election law professor — University of Michigan’s Ellen D. Katz — “Democrats at DOJ: Why Partisan Use of the Voting Rights Act Might Not Be So Bad After All.”

When I say they hide in plain sight, these are the things I mean.  There are many more examples of outright hostility to the Constitution becoming mainstream.

These are threats to our Constitutional order against which, I will submit, our old means of defense are largely ineffective.

We have entered a new battlespace between left and right.  No longer do we have gentle disagreements about public policy.  Instead, the Left has sought to criminalize many disagreements, has weaponized the law to attack their foes – both personally and substantively – and is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a multi-front war to transform the remaining institutions that they have not already transformed.  They seek to silence their opposition.  [This is what writers such as Michael Sean Winters of the Fishwrap doe.  Like a member of the New catholic Red Guard, he points and jumps up and down and blows a whistle when he imagines that someone has transgressed against the content of his prized Little Red Book.  Thus, he tries to aim those with power at his targets.  This is what he did to Prof. Chad Pecknold the other day.  This was his tactic in a green-inked hit against Catholic University of America just as the board of CUA was about to meet.]

I am afraid that the scholarly voice is no longer an effective rebuttal – and hence I believe you can explain one reason why President Trump was elected.  The American public, who believe in the Constitution, who believe in the Rule of Law, saw it under attack from so many places.

Let me turn to a few examples where this is happening in my own field of expertise: election law.

The transformative Left understands that process drives policy.

[NB – He gets into all important PROCESS.]Process means the rules, the boring things, if you will.  Conservatives are focused on ideas, policies, reasoned debate.  Naturally so, as they care about the issues. Whereas the left is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to destroy your policies through the transformation of process.

What are example of process issues in election law?

I mean the rules that govern elections.  The rules that govern speech.  Control over the institutions.

[…]

Read the rest there.

Process… process… process.

Keep bashing away and wearing down your opponent through insistence on process.  (“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” … “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”)   Endless court cases… endless accusations and filings and complaints and indictments….  Fight every law, decision, election, finding and drive it back into the courts.  Keep asserting the same referenda over and over and over, until they drive through.

On a positive note: perhaps traditionalists could make use of this dedication in a parish by being always the ones to show up for parish events, being the first to volunteer for something to be handled, making themselves indispensable to the pastor, the choir director, the religious ed coordinator.  Show up and transform.

Yeah… that‘s gonna happen.   Too often, people show up for “their Mass” and then disappear, having even ignored or undernourished the collection basket.

I think that has to change.

But back to the more secular application of these tactics.

This fellow has made a strong case.  It is disturbing.

Si vis pacem para bellum! v. ¡Hagan lío!

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, Si vis pacem para bellum!, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices | Tagged
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Looking At Danger: Justice Kennedy, SCOTUS, and Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission

Posted on 5 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Today at Crisis there is a good summary piece about the complicity of catholic Justice Anthony Kennedy with the secularist Left and about the recent SCOTUS decision in the matter of Masterpiece Cakeshop, LTD v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which probably left Jesuits weeping into their Cosmopolitans.

The writer points out some of Justice Kennedy’s landmark achievements: Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992); Lawrence v. Texas (2003); Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).  What a guy.

The writer, Bob Sullivan, takes us back to Pres. Kennedy’s traitorous 1960 speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, which thereafter gave cover to coward catholics to be “devout” but pro-abortion, etc., and which foreshadowed the Obama Administration’s assault on freedom of religion with freedom of worship.

The writer makes a scary point:

The other problem with Justice Kennedy’s decision is that he sidestepped Mr. Phillips’s arguments about freedom of speech and focused on the obvious anti-religious bias of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. [NB] If the Civil Right Commissioners had been more polite in their comments and had not exhibited such a blatant hostility toward Christianity in other similar cases, might the Supreme Court have upheld the penalties imposed on Mr. Phillips? Justice Kennedy believes it could have. He wrote: “…it must be concluded that the State’s interest could have been weighed against Phillips’s sincere religious objections in a way consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed.” He also wrote: “The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market.”

It seems that the judgement of the SCOTUS could have been determined on the basis of the thin thread of tone.

He concludes:

Let’s start electing and appointing Catholics who actually know and live their faith. Let’s start calling on those Catholics currently in office to be courageous in defending truth.

Before we can elect them, we have to raise them and get them to run.

Posted in Liberals, Religious Liberty, Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Coming Storm, The Drill, The future and our choices, The Last Acceptable Prejudice | Tagged , ,
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ASK FATHER: First Eucharist or First Communion?

Posted on 5 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader…

QUAERITUR:

I have noticed an uptake lately in referring to first communion as first Eucharist, usually by people who insist on referring to extraordinary ministers of holy communion as Eucharistic ministers. The uptake seems frequent and widespread enough that it seems deliberate and not accidental, careless or due to ignorance. It does not seem right to refer to first communion as first Eucharist. For one thing it seems to me that this over identifies participating in Mass with receiving communion. For another it implies that children who have not yet received communion have not attended Mass or been present for, or at, the Eucharistic celebration. Either that or, again, the importance of being present at Mass is being minimized or slighted when communion is not received. Am I wrong to find this trend troubling?

Words have meanings which, over time, can drift around.  For example, “nice” once meant “foolish, silly”.  “Girl” could once indicate either sex (and, come to think of it, it still does).  Lexicographers have to make choices when creating dictionaries to determine if their definitions are going to be descriptive (this is how the word is being used) or prescriptive (this is how the word must be used.

In the Church terms drift around or they are used in sloppy ways.  Also, we can call one thing by many different names or terms.  Think, for example, of how we say “Sacrament of Penance” or “Reconciliation” or “Confession”.   In the sloppy department, we hear people say “liturgy” when they mean “Mass”.  Liturgy is more than just the Mass.

“Eucharist” can describe both the Blessed Sacrament Itself as well as the liturgical rite of Mass wherein the Eucharist is consecrated.   “Communion” can describe reception of the Eucharist.  However, Communion can be received within the context of Mass or outside the context of Mass.

When I hear or read “First Eucharist”, I get what is meant, but to my ear and eye that seems like going to Mass for the first time.   It could, I suppose mean going to Exposition for the first time, though I’m stretching.  “First Communion” more clearly describes what is happening: the person is received Holy Communion, the Eucharist, for the first time.

I suppose that “First Eucharist” came from someone – one of those Good Idea Fairies – who had an “idea” after attending a liturgy workshop.

Let’s continue to use clear and precise terms.  You brought up the confusion of Extraordinary Ministers of Communion or of the Eucharist.  These are two different roles.

Heck, even the word “Extraordinary” these days isn’t well understood.  After all, “extraordinary” can mean quite a few things, depending on the context.  For example, upon hearing “First Eucharist” for “First Communion” a British friend of mine would respond, “How extraordinary!”

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged , ,
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A Small Asteroid Hit Earth on 2 June

Posted on 4 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Sometimes friends and I joke – but not really – about how it might be preferable, given how things are going these days, to have an asteroid strike.

That’s what happened on Saturday 2 June.  Don’t worry.  We are still here.  It was small.

From SpaceWeather:

SMALL ASTEROID HITS EARTH: On Saturday, June 2nd, astronomers working with the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona discovered a small asteroid (2018 LA) near the orbit of the Moon. Hours later, it hit Earth. The boulder-sized space rock entered the atmosphere traveling 38,000 mph (17 km/s) and exploded over Botswana at 6:44 p.m. local time. A video camera at a farm near Ottosda, South Africa, recorded the explosion. It was impressively bright even at a distance:

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

The explosion sent waves of low-frequency sound (infrasound) rippling through the atmosphere, and it was detected by an infrasound monitor in South Africa, deployed as part of the International Monitoring System of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Meteor expert Peter Brown of the University of Western Ontario analyzed the signals and came to these conclusions about the explosion:

“The yield was in the range 0.3 to 0.5 kilotons of TNT,” he says. “That corresponds to a 2 meter diameter asteroid.”  [F=ma after all] 

As asteroids go, that’s very small. It posed no significant danger to objects on the ground as it disintegrated almost wholly in the atmosphere. Fragments may yet be found on the ground and recovered for sale or scientific study.

The real significance of this event is that it highlights the growing capability of modern sky surveys to discover asteroids targeting Earth. Even small faint space rocks are being caught in the net. Boulder-sized impactors have been discovered hurtling toward Earth three times in the past 10 years: 2008 TC3 exploded over northern Sudan on Oct. 7, 2008; 2014 AA burned up above the Atlantic Ocean on Jan. 1, 2014; and now 2018 LA. In each case, the warning was less than a day. Larger asteroids may be seen at a greater distance, however, allowing for more lead time. Learn more about the latest impact from NASA.

One of these days, something is going to happen.

We are due for a pandemic of some kind.

We are due for another Carrington Event.

One of these days, something is going to happen.

Have a nice day!

Posted in SESSIUNCULA | Tagged ,
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ASK FATHER: How to convince a priest to learn the Traditional Latin Mass?

Posted on 4 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

From a reader….

QUAERITUR:

Our vicar is a very devout priest from Poland but today I heard him saying “the ordinary form is enough for me”. What do you suggest to do in order to convince him to offer the Holy Mass in the extraordinary form of the roman rite?

GUEST PRIEST RESPONSE: Fr. Tim Ferguson

How to convince a priest to embrace the extraordinary form. Hmmm.

First, recognize that most priests are busier than they would like to be. The demands of the office are huge in the best of times – and there are always those things that priests wish they could attend to, but just don’t have time. Few priests go to bed at the end of a day thinking, “Yep, I’ve pretty much done everything I wanted to today.” I suppose that could be said of just about everyone.

If a priest looks at the extraordinary form of the Holy Mass as “one more thing to do,” it can be daunting. If he can look at it, however, as “this will enrich my priesthood,” then you might be on to something.

First he’ll need exposure to the extraordinary form. Is there one celebrated regularly nearby? At a convenient time? Could there be an opportunity for you to say, “Father, Ss. Processus and Martinian is offering a High Mass for the feast of St. Cuthbert next month on a Tuesday evening. We’d love to take you – you can sit in choir, and not have to do anything – then we’ll take you out for a nice dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. There are six of us going, and we’d love to have you join us.”

Don’t be pushy. If he says no, or digs his heels in, then back off – and pray. Pray for him.

Would it be possible to bring in a priest from outside to offer the extraordinary form at your church? Or maybe even invite in a priest familiar with the EF to have a chat with your priest? Nothing confrontational, just a chat. Sometimes priests, depending on their formation, get some wild ideas about what “those priests” are like. Meeting them, and coming to know them as just men, as good men, as normal men can wear down some of the misconceptions. Of course, make sure that the priest in question IS  a good and normal man.

Unless he expresses an interest, don’t flood him with books, DVD’s, articles – the flood of material a priest receives is often overwhelming and it can be easy to just simply ignore unsolicited literature rather than engage it. Speak to him openly and honestly about your love for the EF, and what it has done for your relationship with God and your faith life.

And pray. Keep praying for him, even if he digs his heels in. Prayer can truly move mountains.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Priests and Priesthood, SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM |
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UPDATED – LONDON: Corpus Christi in Maiden Lane – Beauty and faith in the streets

Posted on 4 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

UPDATE:

ACK!  I posted the wrong photos.  Corrections below.

Speaking of Corpus Christi and processions, you might recall that some months ago I suggested to the readership that it would be a good gesture to help Corpus Christi parish in London, on Maiden Lane near Covent Garden, to buy a new procession canopy.  You responded well and they were able to raise the funds.

Yesterday, they had a big day at that central London parish.   Cardinal Nichols made their church the Westminster Diocesan Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament.  At the conclusion of 40 Hours Devotion, the Cardinal was celebrant for the Pontifical Mass and procession.

This is an impressive place, in the heart of London.  It was established by Card. Manning in 1874 and was the first church in England named for the Body and Blood of the Lord. The parish priest has undertaken a beautiful project of renewal of the interior.  The before and after photos are striking.  Also, this is where, even in the very dark years, the TLM was maintained with the help of the Latin Mass Society (if you don’t belong, please think about joining). They also have a Sodality of the Blessed Sacrament.

The photos from our Mass with Cardinal Nichols and procession around Covent Garden can be seen HERE. And HERE Samples:

See what can happen with imagination and elbow grease and cooperation of different parties?

This is New Evangelization.

And here are some shots from their photo album of the Extraordinary Form Mass HERE.

They also have new Stations of the Cross.  HERE

And a video from the Cardinal Archbishop with great images:

YouTube thumbnailYouTube icon

Posted in ¡Hagan lío!, "How To..." - Practical Notes, Fr. Z KUDOS, Just Too Cool, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, New Evangelization | Tagged
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Sort of good news from SCOTUS and from the CDF and Pope Francis.

Posted on 4 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

UPDATE:

Apparently, Card. Marx is “überrascht… surprised” by the letter from Rome. HERE

What’s next? Will they play the money card?

Did they play the money card yet?

I’d bet that would wear pretty thin pretty quickly with this Pope.

Meanwhile, Card. Woelki gave a strong fervorino about this issue for Corpus Christ at the Cologne cathedral.  HERE   and an English account HERE.

“There has been much discussion about the Eucharist in recent weeks. Some people said ‘What is this all about? This is nonsense!’, others even said ‘This is a Punch and Judy show!’. I say – this is about life and death… This is fundamental! And that is why we have to fight and look for the right way. Not just any way, but the Lord’s way.”

[…]

“Once again, we in Germany do not live on an ‘Island of the blessed’, we are not a national Church,” the cardinal said. “We are part of the great Universal Church and all of our German dioceses are members of the global whole, united under the head, the Holy Father.”

The congregation – quite rightly in this matter – applauded him.

___

Originally Published on: Jun 4, 2018 @ 10:59

Today we have some good news.

First, sort of good news.  SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated baker Jack Phillips’ civil rights under the 1st Amendment. The Colorado baker refused to make a wedding cake for a homosexual couple. However, But the court did not rule on the larger issue: can a business invoke religious objections and refuse service to homosexuals on the grounds that they are homosexuals?

Next, Pope Francis blocked the document that the wacky German bishops wanted to issue in favor of inter-communion. You might recall that a majority of German bishops proposed to admit to Communion the non-believing, non-Catholic spouses of Catholics. A few bishops objected.

On one side was the usual suspect Card. Marx and his crew, and on the other Card. Woelki and 7 seven other bishops.

At first, the Pope sent them back to Germany to work it out. That prompted Card Eijk of Utrecht to say that not not providing an answer to such a clear issue was inexplicable. HERE.

In any event, today, on the very day that Francis received a group of German Lutherans, a letter to the German bishops dated 25 May from the Prefect of the CDF, Card.-Elect Ladaria was released that nailed things down… with the explicit support of the Pope.

Sandro Magister has the text in Italian (from the German original) HERE. CNA has a story in English HERE.

In a nutshell, Ladaria says that the German document should not be issued. He gave three reasons:

First, Ladaria stressed that admission to Communion of Protestant spouses in inter-confessional marriages “is a topic that touches the faith of the Church and has relevance for the universal Church.”  [As Archbp. Chaput so ably pointed out the other day!]

Allowing non-Catholics to receive the Eucharist, even in certain limited conditions, would also have an impact on ecumenical relations with other Churches and ecclesial communities “which should not be underestimated.”

Finally, he said the question of Communion is a matter of Church law, and cited canon 844 of the Code of Canon Law, which deals with access to the Sacraments of the Catholic Church.

Specifically, canon 844 states that “Catholic ministers administer the sacraments licitly to Catholic members of the Christian faithful alone, who likewise receive them licitly from Catholic ministers alone,” apart from a number of exceptions spelled out in the canon.

These exceptions include allowing non-Catholic Christians to receive the sacraments of Confession, the Eucharist, and the Anointing of the Sick by non-Catholic ministers in churches where these sacraments are valid “whenever necessity requires it or true spiritual advantage suggests it, and provided that danger of error or of indifferentism is avoided.”  [One is forced to ask what those German bishops believe about the Eucharist.  What a horrifying thing to wonder about.]

Catholic ministers, the canon says, can also administer these sacraments licitly on members of Eastern Churches that are not in full communion with Rome, “if they seek such on their own accord and are properly disposed.”

The canon says this is also valid “for members of other Churches which in the judgment of the Apostolic See are in the same condition in regard to the sacraments as these Eastern Churches.”

For non-Catholic Christians unable to approach a minister from their own confession, the canon says they are able to receive these sacraments only “if the danger of death is present or if, in the judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops, some other grave necessity urges it.”

However, to receive the sacraments they must seek reception “on their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed.”

The canon concludes underlining that in the case of the exceptions, “the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops is not to issue general norms except after consultation at least with the local competent authority of the interested non-Catholic Church or community.”

In his letter to Cardinal Marx, Ladaria noted that while there are “open questions” in some sectors of the Church in regards to the interpretation of canon 844, “the competent dicasteries of the Holy See have already been charged with producing a timely clarification of these questions at the level of the universal Church.”

However, he said it would be left up to diocesan bishops to judge when there is a “grave impending need” regarding the reception of the sacraments.

So, SCOTUS didn’t definitively solve the problem and neither did the CDF and Pope Francis, since the Curia still has to deal with the larger question for the whole Church.

However, this shows that SCOTUS isn’t entirely insane and the Curia has not been completely stripped of authority, even though it seems that Francis wants to devolve authority to bishops conferences.

Each case point in a direction.

The first amendment still applies.

When bishops conferences do their own thing, chaos and confusion result.

We got an injection of common sense today.

Still, I am left a little melancholy.  We are in a sad situation when these two bits of sort of good news make this into a good Monday.

Posted in Our Catholic Identity, Sin That Cries To Heaven, The Coming Storm, The future and our choices | Tagged , , ,
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Francis’ Corpus Christi Eucharistic procession. Wherein Fr. Z rants.

Posted on 3 June 2018 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Here is a really sad tweet about this year’s Corpus Christi procession moved from Rome to Ostia. (Not a great idea, but, hey, they didn’t ask me.) There is a link to a video of the whole thing. Click ahead and watch the crowd.  WARNING: The music is horrific.  Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.

None of this should surprise us after the last, say, 50 years or so.

We can grant, that getting a procession together can be a little chaotic and distracting, and it can be distracting to have the Pope in your neighborhood.  We can grant that people who are truly wicked can kneel and put on a pious but empty show.  What you see through the streets in the video is something else entirely.   It seems to be a lack of comprehension, rather than of indifference.

Were there no signs of faith or reverence?  Of course there were.  But watch extended moments and get a sense of it.

And this started a long time before Pope Francis was Pope.  On the other hand, I don’t think I am being entirely unfair to remind people of Benedict XVI in Hyde Park, London – HERE (try 40:00 on).    Also, lest I be unfair, you can find youtube videos of Corpus Christi processions of yesteryear and not everyone kneels.  1925 HERE – 1941 HERE  1947 HERE  There is an entirely different ethos.   We also must adjust our minds for cultural differences and locations: cathedrals of major cities are different from parishes in small towns.  Nevertheless…

We all understand the concept quantum potes tantum aude, but the quantum and the tantum and the posse and the audere have been nearly reduced to zero.   I refer the readership to my rants about milk and goop v. steak and cabernet.  We also know that in most places, if there is even cultural Catholicism left, it’s a surprise.  We have to be patient and realistic.

Above all, however, we have to examine ourselves and what we are doing.

All the more reason for our own truly devout relationship with Christ in the Eucharist and efforts to initiate, foster and promote worthy sacred liturgical worship.

I often have written in these electronic pages of the connections between our identity as Catholics, our impact in the public square, and our sacred liturgical worship. This is what Benedict XVI’s “Marshall Plan” (as I called it) was all about.

You might recall what the Marshall Plan was.

After World War II many regions of Europe were devastated, especially its large cities and manufacturing. These USA helped rebuild Europe through the Marshall Plan so as to foster good trading partners and, through prosperity, stand as a bulwark against Communism.

After Vatican II many spheres of the Church were devastated, especially its liturgical and catechetical life. We need to rebuild our Catholic identity so that we can stand, for ourselves as members of the Church and in the public square for the good of society, as a bulwark – indeed a remedy – against the dictatorship of relativism.

If we don’t know who we are as Catholics, if we don’t know what we believe or pray as Catholics, then the world has no reason to listen to anything we have to say as Catholics. We will be all the more easily driven from the public square.

In that procession, with the Holy Father and Eucharistic Lord, people just stared – like passive observers. They were exactly as libs falsely accuse people of being at the Traditional Roman Rite.

We need a Church wide “Marshall Plan”. No renewal of the Church can take place without a revitalization of our Catholic worship. Without a renewal of worship, all our other efforts will be lacking.

We are beset from within and from without. At the same time, our obligations to strive for greater holiness and fidelity within the Church, and to bring the Good News and Christ to the rest of the world, both remain. We must be renewed internally, so as to be effective externally. This is an ad intra imperative (Catholics considered as Catholics among themselves) and also an ad extra mission (Catholics considered in relation to the wider world).

Catholics, as Catholics, have been shoved out of the public square. They are more often than not excluded from contributing to discussion of the burning questions of our day. This is usually because Catholics themselves, as Catholics, excluded themselves from contributing a genuinely Catholic voice because they are either dissenters or because they are weak or because they are ignorant or because they are cowardly.

Catholics must contribute to the discussion in the public square, or as Pope Benedict called this phenomenon the “digital continent”.

We have an obligation, each of us according to our vocations, to shape the world around us to the extent we can. Holy Church has a God-given mission to teach both ad intra and – of course – ad extra.

The ad intra dimension entails Catholics knowing who they are and what they believe. If we don’t know who we are as Catholics, we will never be able to articulate anything clearly about the burning questions of our day and make a contribution as Catholics according to our vocations. If we don’t know these things, if we are not firm in them, then we are vulnerable to every manner of marginalization and, don’t doubt it, persecution.

We will be marginalized and persecuted anyway. We may as well strive for holiness and salvation within the hardships we will inevitably face as living signs of contradiction.

There is an incremental erosion of human, common sense values taking place. At a certain point, the erosion will pick up speed and, suddenly, we will wake up in a new kind of world.

Good grief… it already is.

The process of revitalizing our identity and our Church will take time. Our gains will be slow and incremental. Brick by brick. And, in worldly terms, we may make no discernible progress in our lifetimes.

Do we have time? When the Lord returns, will He find faith? Shall we be judged for not having done our part?

Are we passive observers?

For the near future, we must not be complacent or one day soon we will find we are living a nightmare. Our judgment will follow.

I firmly believe that in Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, the emancipation proclamation for the older Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, we have a mighty gift and tool to help us revitalize our Catholic worship, to reconnect with our tradition and identity as worshiping Catholics. Summorum Pontificum, clearly one of the important achievements of Pope Benedict’s pontificate, is slowly being implemented. We need more.

No renewal of Holy Church and our identity, our ability to contribute to and shape the world around us as Catholics, is possible without a renewal of our liturgical worship.

The older form of Holy Mass of the Roman Rite, the Usus Antiquior, must return in strength. Recovery of the older form will exert a “gravitational pull” on the way the Novus Ordo is celebrated. As priests learn or relearn the older form, they change the way the say the newer form. The deepening of their ars celebrandi will have a knock-on effect in their congregations.

A good example of what I mean is the impact that ad orientem worship has when it is restored.

This is not for the sake of aesthetics or nostalgia. I think we are in a fight for our spiritual lives.

Revitalized worship of God is a necessary element of a New Evangelization.

The Biological Solution continues is scything work. New priests, free from the dominating hermeneutic of the 60’s-80’s, are rising up. In the next few years, we should see a more rapid increase in the number and places where the older form is used.

To save our world we must save our liturgy.

And even if the world is slipping beyond our reach, we must nevertheless relentlessly seek through grace and elbow grease the salvation of our souls and those of our loved ones and as many as will come with us.

 

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