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Fr. Marcel Guarnizo Washington D.C., Mar 14, 2012 / 01:25 pm (CNA).- In an extensive statement provided to CNA, Father Marcel Guarnizo insists that the reasons the Archdiocese of Washington placed him on leave “have everything to do” with his recent decision to withhold communion from Barbara Johnson.Fr. Guarnizo explains that he decided to issue the detailed March 14 statement because of the questions his parishioners and the public are asking about the recent incident.His response, which is published below, offers corrections to previous news reports, responds to canonical arguments and gives information about where the allegations of intimidation...

Restore Communion On The Tongue Only Most Holy Father, We are convinced of the great spiritual harm inflicted on the Catholic faithful, and the profanation of the Blessed Sacrament that often occurs, by the practice of Communion received on the hand. We implore Your Holiness to personally intervene to restore once again the normative practice of reception of Holy Communion on the tongue alone.

The story of a Eucharistic Miracle that happened in Kumasi a city in Ghana in the 1990s. A Protestant man took the picture of the Monstrance during the Corpus Christi procession and after the image was processed, an image of Jesus Christ was the result. Find the article over here Eucharistic Miracle: Face of Jesus captured by a Skeptic

What Does GIRM 160 for the USA Really Say? Posted on 24 June 2011 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf  When the new English translation of the Roman Missal is released, it will sport a new translation of the GIRM, the General Institution/Instruction of the Roman Missal.There are, of course, adaptations for the USA and other Anglophone regions.As it happens, the Congregation for Divine Worship has … tweaked some items.  I am sure this was to harmonize the language of the GIRM with the language of the rest of the Roman Missal.  However, tweaks may have been tweaked for other reasons.For example,...

Many of New Mexico's Catholics were reminded during Mass last weekend that unmarried couples who cohabitate are living in "a state of mortal sin and may not receive Holy Communion." Archbishop Michael Sheehan told priests to read the letter he wrote stating that only two lifestyles are acceptable: "a single life of chastity, or the union of a man and woman in the Sacrament of Matrimony." The message stops short of directing priests to deny communion to unmarried people who are living together. Instead, Sheehan urges those "living in cohabitation" to abstain from taking the consecrated bread and wine during...

Divine Mercy Diary Exerpts   Jesus's words are in italics.  St. Faustina's words are in regular print.   "Your task is to write down everything that I make known to you about My mercy, for the benefit of those who by reading these things will be comforted in their souls and will have the courage to approach Me." (1693)     "Mankind will not have peace until it turns with trust to My mercy." (300)     

Holy Communion 784. What did our Lord mean when He said, "He that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me." Jn 6:58. Is not our eternal life due to the death of Christ on the Cross? It is true that our Lord merited eternal life for us by His death on the Cross. But the fruit and grace of that sacrifice are applied to our souls by the Sacraments. Now the central Sacrament of all is the Holy Eucharist. We receive the principle of supernatural life by Baptism, but the Eucharist is ordained for the preservation of that...

Have you ever attended a Mass where people who seemed unaware of what the Mass was about walked up to receive Communion?  A while ago my husband Tom and I attended a Mass for a wedding like that.  One couldn’t help but notice, by the lack of responses and the chatting away, that most of the folks at the Mass were either not Catholic or had fallen away from regularly going to Mass.  They seemed to have no way of knowing when to pray, to sit, to stand or to kneel.I was thus flabbergasted at this wedding Mass when many of...

Falling Down, We Adore Him July 27th, 2010 by Trent Beattie  Print This Article · Despite widespread appearance to the contrary, receiving Holy Communion on the tongue while kneeling is still the universal norm for the Catholic Church.  True, most of us who grew up in the 70s or 80s were told otherwise, but since when has catechesis from those years been considered accurate?For centuries Catholics had received Holy Communion on the tongue while kneeling.There was no popular uprising to change the practice, but in the 60s some dissident leaders in Europe and the United States took it upon...

“Twenty Questions, One Answer: Go to the Sacrament Frequently”Tonight we conclude our five-part series on the Sacrament of the Altar. So far we have followed the outline Luther uses for the Sacrament of the Altar in the Small Catechism: the Nature of the Sacrament, what it is; the Benefit of the Sacrament, what it gives; the Power of the Sacrament, how it can do such great things; and the Reception of the Sacrament, how to receive it worthily. But remember what I said right at the outset of this series, about the purpose of this teaching: Our purpose here in...

“How Do We Receive It Worthily? The Reception of the Sacrament of the Altar”During this series on the Sacrament of the Altar, we’ve been following the outline Luther uses in his treatment of this part of the Small Catechism. And so we began by asking, “What is the Sacrament of the Altar?” And we said that the nature of the Sacrament is that it is “the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us Christians to eat and to drink.” Then in week two we asked, “What is...

“How Can It Do Such Great Things? The Power of the Sacrament of the Altar”Two weeks ago we began this series by establishing “The Nature of the Sacrament of the Altar,” asking the question “What Is It?” and hearing Christ’s answer, “This is my body, this is my blood.” Last week we followed that up by asking “What Does It Give?” and Jesus told us, “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” We said that this is “The Benefit of the Sacrament” and that “where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.” But...

“What Does It Give? The Benefit of the Sacrament of the Altar”In this midweek Lenten series, we’re looking at the Sacrament of the Altar--Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, are other names by which we know this sacrament instituted by Christ. Last week we began by focusing on “The Nature of the Sacrament.” We asked the foundational question, “What Is It?” And the answer came, “It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine, instituted by Christ himself for us Christians to eat and to drink.” Our answer was based on what Jesus...

“What Is It? The Nature of the Sacrament of the Altar”When the Lord God brought the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and led them up to the Promised Land, he provided for them along the way. He gave them food and drink for their journey, to sustain them as they traveled. He gave them bread from heaven. It came in the form of a fine, flake-like thing that fell on the ground in the morning, for them to gather up. The first time the Israelites saw it--they had never seen such a thing before--they were amazed, and...

Scranton native Sen. Joe Biden would likely feel at home any day of the week in Northeast Pennsylvania. Well, any day except possibly Sunday. The Most Rev. Joseph F. Martino, bishop of Scranton, has strongly supported refusal of Holy Communion for politicians who campaign for or vote in favor of abortion rights. When asked whether the Democratic vice presidential candidate would be refused Communion should he tour the region, the diocese held firm to its past statements. "I will not tolerate any politician who claims to be a faithful Catholic who is not genuinely pro-life," Bishop Martino said in a...

Rome, Aug 19, 2008 / (CNA) -- Archbishop Raymond Burke, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority of the Holy See, said this week that Catholics who publicly support abortion -- especially politicians -- should not receive Communion, and that ministers of Communion should be responsibly charitable in denying it to them if they ask for it “until they have reformed their lives.” [[Burke082108.jpg]]In an interview with the magazine Radici Christiane, Archbishop Burke pointed out that there is often a lack of reverence at Mass when receiving Communion. “Receiving the Body and Blood of...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, whose longtime support for homosexual rights and abortion has made her the darling of groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and the Human Rights Campaign, has once again made it a point to describe herself as “Catholic.” In a Sunday, Aug. 3, interview about her recently published book Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters for the C-SPAN network’s “Q&A” program, host Brian Lamb asked Pelosi, “The one word I read several times in your book is the word ‘faith.’ And you wrote, ‘Growing up Catholic had an enormous impact on me -- greater,...

Several leading Australian political figures who are Catholic will attend the papal Mass closing World Youth Day, highlighting some leaders’ inconsistencies in applying their faith to political life. Morris Iemma, the Premier of New South Wales who voted for embryonic stem cell research, has said he wants to receive Holy Communion from Pope Benedict XVI at the closing Mass for World Youth Day but also said he did not expect to do so, the Sydney Morning Herald says. Iemma, a practicing Catholic, said having the Pope in Sydney would be a “deeply rewarding experience for all Catholics, my family included.”...

The Catholic League has launched a campaign to bring public scorn on a University of Minnesota-Morris teacher who threatened to treat a consecrated communion wafer, which Catholics believe becomes the body of Christ, "with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse." To which the professor in question, Paul Zachary Myers, responded: "Scumbags." The issue arose over an argument that didn't even involve Myers. As WND reported, a student at the University of Central Florida reported getting death threats after he stole and later returned a wafer from a Catholic Mass in Orlando.

Yesterday, Catholic League president Bill Donohue issued a news release calling attention to the plea that Paul Zachary Myers made on his blog: he solicited the Communion Host for the express purpose of desecrating it. Donohue now responds to the reaction he has received from the University of Minnesota Morris professor, as well as others: “Myers went on Houston radio station KPFT last night saying that Bill Donohue has ‘declared a fatwa’ against him. He should know better—I don’t need others to do the fighting for me. I’m quite good at it myself. But he’d better be careful what he...