LACUNAE IN THE EUCHARISTIC YEAR
As the Church continues its celebration of the Eucharistic Year, a number of lingering discrepancies between the authentic teaching of the Church and current pastoral practice continue to plague the spiritual lives of the faithful.
First of all, actions are still promoted, which promote the idea that Christ is only putatively present as the Blessed Sacrament (i.e., He is really present only when and if we choose to acknowledge His presence). Thus, 1) as we address Him in the Kyrie at Mass, the priest and people do not turn to face Him in the tabernacle, 2) when people are trying to pray in the church, distracting loud conversations are allowed to continue there, 3) when extraordinary ministers perform ablutions of the sacred vessels after Mass, instead of doing so in humble reverent and recollected silence, reminiscent of the reverence with which the Body of Jesus was brought to the tomb after His death, distracting conversations are often conducted as they "do the dishes", and 4) Particles of the Eucharistic, Christ falling to the floor due to the sloppy implementation of Communion in the hand, are often left to be cleaned up by the church vacuum cleaner. All this leads to a serious question. If He, Who is the Truth, may legitimately be disregarded or ignored for the sake of expediency, may His moral teaching also be disregarded in certain circumstances for the sake of expediency?
With regard to the practice of Communion in the hand, it should be noted that the carefully worded indult, which capitulated to the disobedient practice of permitting this practice, was rarely implemented as directed - with those who insisted on faithfully fulfilling these sacred disciplines often criticized for having more clarity than charity. Thus, as Church leaders flippantly allow small Eucharistic particles to be treated as "insignificant", so also small "particles" of humanity (e.g., "excess" IVF embryos, pre-born babies, the 300,000+ undocumented migrant children "lost" by INS) apparently may also be disregarded as "insignificant" and not worth our care or attention.
Likewise, it should be noted that it took the USCCB over twenty-five years to seek the correction of numerous abuses of the Blessed Sacrament through its Guidelines for the Reception of Communion. But even this was rather vapid, since guidelines fall short of being authoritative directives for such reception. And to further obfuscate the issue, it allowed such guidelines to be placed in obscure locations of pew missals/missalettes, rather than in the liturgical texts immediately before Holy Communion. By thus consigning such guidelines to positions analogous to an insignificant appendix, footnote or afterthought, it conveyed the impression that strictly following them was not a serious matter. This again confirmed the idea that Christ is to be considered not as really, truly and substantially present as the Blessed Sacrament, as merely putatively present in the Blessed Sacrament.
As an aside, it should be noted that statements by Pope Francis indicate that the right to migrate is so absolute that it de facto abrogates the teaching in CCC #2241 that migrants are morally required to respect the laws and customs of the nation, into which they migrate. Instead, it seems that the Holy Father is asserting that such migrants are entitled to indefinitely receive funding and support services from the nation, into which they illegally migrate. If this is so, it raises another question. If a person has the absolute right to migrate geographically on his/her own terms, with no regard for the migration laws of the nation they enter, does not a person also have a corresponding right to migrate spiritually on his/her own terms into the Church and her sacramental life, with respect for the "migration" protocols of the Church, such as the OCIA and marriage tribunal, being merely optional?
These problems have been further exacerbated by the failure of Church leaders to take legal steps in the secular realm to decisively assert that the Blessed Sacrament is not a possession of the Church or of the communicant, but rather a sacred trust given to the Church, which must be reverently accepted by the communicant and be treated in fully harmony with the will of Christ as enunciated in the magisterial teachings of the Catholic Church. The lack of such a clear assertion legally allows a communicant to treat the consecrated Host received during Holy Communion as merely a cult object and his/her possession, which may be used in whatever way that person finds helpful for his/her agenda or "faith journey". In addition, this failure implies that the Church wills to give legitimacy to the basic premise of slavery (i.e., that a person [the Eucharistic Christ] may legitimately be treated as mere property), and thus acquiescences to the premise that the Eucharistic Christ may indeed legitimately be relegated to the state of chattel slavery in accordance to the agenda and desires of the communicant. Such an assertion is further confirmed by pro-actively pro-abortion "faithful Catholics in good standing", who use Him and their regular reception of Him in Holy Communion to justify their "supremacy of conscience" in asserting that He is actually Moloch and rejoices to have pre-born babies brutally butchered in the womb.
There are many other ways, by which the hierarchy continues to allow the faith of Catholics in the Real Presence of the Eucharistic Christ to be incrementally degraded. For example, why is it tolerated to allow the Eucharistic Christ to be referred to by the pronoun, It, rather than by He, Him, His (e.g., Prayer during commingling before Communion)? Why do we assert, as Luther did, that Jesus is present in the Blessed Sacrament (like I am now present in my office), rather than as the Blessed Sacrament? Why do we continue to say that we receive Holy Communion (as our property), rather than enter into Holy Communion (as a sacred trust, for which we are seriously accountable)? Why do we continue to avoid the use of words, such as "evil", "wrong" and "sacrilege", in deference to the more politically correct and vapid word, "inappropriate"? And why do we allow the distortion of the clear Church teaching on the supremacy of conscience (i.e., a sincere conscience guided by a deepening docility to the whole truth of God) to be distorted to the point where many feel free to equate morality with short-sighted or perverted expediency and to identify every happy hormone as a prompting of the Holy Spirit.? Such sloppy theology inevitably leads to sloppy morality and sloppy spiritualities.
Thus it is that, if we continue on a path, 1) which allows souls to treat the Eucharistic Christ as a mascot for their agendas and lifestyles, rather than as Master of their lives, 2) which concedes that there can be a discrepancy between charity and the clarity of truth, 3) which trivializes the desecrating power of sinseriousness of liturgical abuse and 4) which acquiesces to the idea that the primary purpose of repentance is to help people to feel better, rather than become better through a deepening accountability to the obedience of Faith, our effort to promote a true Eucharistic revival of the Church will prove to be tragically counterproductive. Regeneration without authentic life-giving repentance is impossible.
Fr. Thomas R. Collins
Hot Springs VA
As to Fr. Collins' second paragraph, you could add to the list that the Novus Ordo's rubrics explicitly command ignoring the Blessed Sacrament if reserved in the sanctuary, other than genuflections at the beginning and ending of Mass. All other reverences are bows directed to the altar. A silly rubric that, I'm noticing, is going ignored more and more often.
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