Posted on 10/05/2005 7:42:02 AM PDT by NYer
VATICAN CITY, OCT. 4, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The art of celebrating the Eucharist, as well as the reception of Communion in the hand, are topics facing scrutiny by participants in the Synod of Bishops.
The question of Communion in the hand was posed by an Eastern European bishop who said he opposed the practice, and asked that the consecrated host always be administered in the mouth.
Later, the question was addressed by Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, who explained the arguments for and against this practice. One argument against was that it allows a person to depart with the consecrated host without consuming it.
Isidro Catela, Spanish reporter of the Synod of Bishops, told journalists of a case where someone kept a host consecrated by Pope John Paul II and offered to sell it through the Internet.
On occasions, hosts have also been used in Satanic rites. Therefore, Cardinal Arinze asked priests to be attentive when administering Communion in the hand.
Finally, the cardinal explained that it is a decision that depends on the bishops' conferences of each country.
Catela reported that the synodal fathers wish to emphasize the need to celebrate the Mass in a dignified way. Some asked if the seminaries are giving adequate formation in liturgy.
Two synodal fathers, as well as Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said it is desirable that televised Masses be well celebrated, in such a way as to not scandalize the faithful.
Agree with you too!
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Bishops Discussing Communion in the Hand - Also Concerned About How the Mass Is Celebrated
AMEN!
It is a truly spiritually-disconcerting experience, where there is no serenity, no tradition, everything changes/always, everyone is bickering, much clapping, armwaving, horrible and very ugly music.
BTTT!
Excellent observation, Pio! Oh, the ugly music! At one church local to me, it reminds me of the cheesy lounge music badly played on TV movie portrayals of the seedy parts of Vegas, usually in murder mysteries. And the everything changing constantly but in ways unexpected and following no logical evolution aspect. LOL, this Novus Ordu run amok, or the new suggested name - Penitential Rite, may draw some of us folks to it more frequently to offer penance for ourselves and others!
#16
"Our priority is to justify and make grow the heart of the Catholics, their desire and aspiration to participate in the Eucharist. In order to transmit to the modern people the eucharistic mystery, it is not sufficient to reinforce vigorously the rules and regulations of Eucharistic celebration.
On our part, as bishops, we have to work with more intensity to search for the instruments that would bring to the Catholics of today, the experience of the genuine value of the Eucharist, the plain participation to it, and the experience of the joy it arouses, said Msgr Kang."
The bishop is absolutely right and I think that at least part of the problem lies with receiving commuion in the hands (although this was a practice in the very early Church were people would actually take it home with them and self-commune). Some time ago my Sprititual Father and I were discussing how some people seem to skip the Divine Liturgy with alarming frequency and when they do come, the don't go to communion. He commented that if the priest were to say that he would hand out $100.00 bills to each person who came to the Divine Liturgy and another to those who came to communion, the place would be full and people out in street waiting to get in. But when they knew he was handing out Eternal Life, the stayed home to watch the Sunday morning talk shows. I suggested he give a sermon on this and put it in the mothly newsletter to the parishioners. Attendence and reception of communion jumped dramatically. Sometimes all we need to do is give people the proper guidance, which is in part where communion in the hands comes in. Our society is very different in virtually every respect from that of the early Church. By handing communion into the hands of communicants, and even worse doing so by the use of "Eucharistic Ministers", people who spent many years understanding that they couldn't touch the chalice, let alone the Eucharist, that only the priest by virtue of his ordination could do that, were at first confused and I expect scandalized and subsequently rather blaze about the Eucharist and what IN FACT it is. That has to change.
"The Archbishop of Chile proposed a Year of penance”, to complete the Year of the Eucharist.”
What a phenomenal idea! Confession is such a precious Mystery and gift of God to all of us!
Oh, joy. Another document. Just what we needed.
Suggestion: save some trees and scrap the documents. Instead, fire some bishops and appoint some Catholics to these posts. Surely there must be a few left?
Suggested devotion: Prayers to Pope St Gregory VII who holds the record for firing more bishops than any other pope. (You could look it up.)
Cheers.
However, that said, these old ladies can be vicious. I hate the NO mass, but I go to it because there is no Byzantine rite parish around here. I love daily Mass, but I really can't go because of the Eucharettes. I refuse to hold hands and do the wave at the end of the Our Father (you know, where everybody lifts their hands and those of their neighbors, even if said neighbors are standing in front of them at the end of the row and having their arms wrenched out of the socket by the wave folks).
The Eucharettes are staked out in the pews until just before Communion. One of them came over and slapped me on the shoulder because I had my hands pressed together and wasn't holding her hand. I thought she was having a stroke and had fallen on me...then I realized she was simply really PO'd...
Things only got worse after that and she refused to shake my hand at the "kiss of peace." Then she left to do her Eucharette duties...
I'm not particularly "traditionalist" - that is, I think the dead silent Tridentine Rite or the sung TR that excluded women from the schola (which was originally only for boys, thereby indicating that they wanted high voices and NOT men only) is not the ideal solution.
However, I can tell you that outside of a few places, the NO has sunk to levels undreamed of. When you have a priest who comes in and screams "God is good," and the congregation has been trained to yell back, "All the time" - and the bishop doesn't oppose it - I think there are serious problems.
I try to do that, too. Actually, I drive an additional 20 miles every Sunday to go to a parish where ONLY the priests (the pastor and an ancient retired priest who lives there) distribute Communion. In the closest parish, the ushers come down and try to force people out of the line for the priest and into the Eucharette line.
There's a tendency to focus on the horrors and abuses, and to project them onto the Church at large. This is an error. In fact, it is a sin of slander against the many parishes in which sanity is the rule.
Last time I was in NY, I attended Divine Liturgy at a Ukrainian Catholic Church.
When you have a priest who comes in and screams "God is good," and the congregation has been trained to yell back, "All the time"
Where, pray tell, do you have that? Name names, please.
It is a most wonderful suggestion, isn't it! A Year of Penance - just hearing of this seems to shine a light into the darkness.
Queen of Peace, Gainesville, Florida.
And bump.
How do the other parishes in the neighbourhood compare?
Is such outrageous nonsense truly common in the Gainesville area, or is this freak-in-a-roman-collar noteworthy because he is unusual? Even in the Dreadful Diocese of Richmond, true freakballs like Fr. Quinlan are abnormal.
If sheer lunacy were truly as common as traditionalist rhetoric implies, I think I would have managed to run in to more than a few true freakshows by now. In fact, I have only witnessed one (at a 'Catholic' campus ministry on a State university in Virginia), and that was in the late 1980s.
I feel deprived. Where's my freakshow?
You're so kind. ;O)
Gainesville is a university town where the university parish is presided over by a pastor who has been in place for 25 years, talks in his "homilies" about his orgasms, supports "We Are Church" and is hosting a Ramadan fast and get-to-love-Islam day.
We had a totally hands-off bishop for 27 years, and now we have one who is very left socially but orthodox religiously. He is trying to get a grip on the situation, but the problem is that these pastors have been in place for so long that the bishop is virtually incapable of dealing with them. He tried to transfer one and the guy simply refused to go where he was sent and announced that he would deign to go to another parish that he liked better.
If you haven't run into more freakshows, you've got to get out more. They're not hard to find, and the fact that the bishops in their synod are discussing this very matter indicates that it's not solely a "traditionalist" concern, but something that is affecting the entire Church - in a seriously adverse way.
Beyond that ...
you've got to get out more
That's my point. I 'get out' a whole lot more than most folks, and I'm just not running across the freakshows the way I would expect.
Maybe I'm just lucky. Or maybe my Guardian Angel has things in hand ... or the Holy Spirit just doesn't want to expose me to that sort of thing.
Dunno ... but for whatever reason I'm definitely freakshow-deprived and it's not for lack of opportunity.
LOL! That's it. I think I'm going to sign on with your Guardian Angel, because mine let me move to a hotbed of heresy...
I came here from NYC, where you could find flakes, but also very orthodox people. I finally found an orthodox priest here in High Springs, about 20 miles north. His ordination was held up because he was not gay, btw - he attended the Florida Pink Palace (aka, seminary), and Sister Vocations Director told him that his attitude toward gay seminarians (he didn't like them) revealed that he was "excessively rigid."
He's a great priest, and has a very orthodox - heck, saintly - retired priest who helps him. But he has had to fight every step of the way. The good thing is that his parish is growing by leaps and bounds as people flee other parishes, while Fr. Orgasm has to depend on the regular crop of freshmen every year to stay in business.
Actually, my parish has the eucharettes problem in reverse. The pastor and the associate go for reverence and liturgical correctness. Suddenly, we're using a lot more candles, particularly at Easter, and the BIG, beautiful monstrances have come out of storage. On All Souls, the younger priest actually wore an old vestment that was black. It was really beautiful.
There are LOTS of little old ladies and older gentlemen who like the holding hands and the ad libbing and the priests refuse to do it. Listening to the people complain about having a bishop and priests too tied to the Vatican is pretty funny. And none of them show up for Adoration and I haven't see a one in a line for Confession, either, not that that means anything.
The music is better than most places, but a different organist would make a world of difference. Right now he's going over the Missa de Angeles with the congregation and it will be used later this year, like in Advent.
It's an interesting time. Whoever thought that there would be a vice of watching little old ladies squirm?
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