|
TEACHING MOMENTS You may read more of my editorials and commentaries on this page, where I store old editorials with other material.
|
Signs of the Times Editorial (04/26/08) Culinary Eucharist and Those Who See God as Fodder The Gentle Reader is now perusing the latest of many versions of this article, and soon you’ll know why it took me so many tries before publishing. There is a popular error circulating among certain clergy of my beloved Archdiocese, and it goes like this: “If the laity are good enough to pass out the food, they’re good enough to do the dishes.” They refer here to Rome’s prohibition of the laity extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion (EMHC’s) from purifying the vessels after communion. OK, how many things are wrong with this statement? Too many. No one could assert such a silly syllogism in right reason. On the one hand, there are underlying suppositions which are false; second of all, it is an empty, rhetorical attack intended to justify positions of disobedience to Church norms. Now it happened that Rome gave permission – why I’ll never know – to the Americans to “experiment” with allowing the EMHC’s to purify the vessels of the ciboria and chalices after communion. This permission ended on Easter of 2005, but the fact that the permission had ended was widely ignored. I myself suffered great abuse at the hands of some clergy when, on Easter Monday of 2005, I instructed the EMHC’s where I was stationed as Associate Pastor to refrain from the purification, and to bring the sacred vessels to the altar. Then Rome spoke, insisting that this practice stop. And there was a quiet revolt. Some of the revolutionaries took up this “If… then…” argument to justify their disobedience. The first erroneous supposition is that the distribution of communion is the equivalent of “passing out the food.” To speak of the Eucharistic sacrifice, and the ritual of sacramental communion, in such crass terms puts in evidence a defective faith in the Eucharist as both Presence and Sacrifice confected by the priest, and only by him, by the consecration at Mass. The next error is the assumption that there is a necessary relationship between distributing communion and purifying vessels. There is none, of course. The clergy consume the sacrifice, as the priests in the Old Law consumed the sacrifice in the temple; indeed, the sacrifice wasn’t completed until there was the consumption. Jesus is the priest, and in some sense the only priest, of whose priesthood all of us priests participate. The ritual consumption therefore should only be done by the clergy: it’s perfectly logical. A third error, clearly not the last put in evidence by the “if… then…” sentence, is that the sacred vessels are mere dishes and purification is a matter of washing. For every drop of the Precious Blood, and every miniscule crumb of the host, is the fullness of the Body, Blood, human Soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, the Savior. In the local seminary, a certain professor asserted the heresy that the particles of the host could not be the Sacrament, because it didn’t “appear” as food, when the Eucharist is supposed to appear as food. He was quickly promoted to higher ecclesial dignities, not surprisingly. Yet he implicitly renounced his faith in transubstantiation. Yet if one thinks that such crumbs are not the sacrament, then it makes sense that the vessels are mere dishes, instead of true Arks of the Covenant, and that the purification is a mere washing… washing of the drops and crumbs down the drain, into the sewer with the rest of the filth of humanity. Yet how often, to the horror of angel and man alike, in the Archdiocese of Detroit, is the Holy Eucharist thrown into the sewer? Yet if one complains, the complainer and not the perpetrator wins nasty reproaches. Besides these errors, there is one other problem: emotional blackmail. See, unless you disobey the Holy See, you’re a clericalist, laity-hating bigot. The dissenters attempt to portray the faithful as thinking that the priestly ministry is a question of “being good enough.” Indeed, this mentality is behind the abominable movements to promote women priests, or priestesses as one should more properly say, as much as homosexual clergy. There’s the hot-topic, buzz-question of judgmentalism. And, with no regard to the truth, the dissenters force their position by effectively doing what they allegedly deplore: they judge the faithful in the most brutal terms. The purification of vessels is not a question of who is better or not. If that were the case, I know of very few priests who would be “good enough” to purify the vessels; most priests I have ever met have been nothing short of scandalous, making the few holy ones I know such brilliant lights in the world. But the question is not determined by one’s moral quality – that is something only God could know… not even the liberal dissenter could know, sorry guys! – but by one’s office in the Church. All of these errors would be brushed aside, and not even suggested, if only the priests themselves knew what it was to be a priest, and if they had integral faith in the Holy Eucharist. May the Lord have mercy on the Church, and spare us all the endless abuses of his most loving, merciful and beautiful Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist: Bread of Life, God among men, True Body born of the Virgin, Savior of the World, Bread of Angels and Bread of the Wayfarer, Unbloody Sacrifice and the source of hope for all who believe in the Holy Trinity. ---------------- This links deals with the same issue: The sickness of Loulekanitis: Purification by EMCH's † |
USEFUL LINKS & CATHOLIC SITES  Vatican Vatican Radio USCCB Archdiocese of Detroit Gregorbo
blog PHOTO GALLERIES Great
Photos 2007 Great Photos 2006 Ice
Storm Gallery 2007 Trailblazers Galleries Michigan Spring 2007 Early Autumn Colors 2007:may take some moments to load... Contact
Me: I love hearing from people! |
||
