A few days ago, there was ... what seemed to me ... a perfectly horrible little clip on Faher Zed's Blog.
It showed a priest, I think at the Benedict Requiem, publicly forcing a kneeling woman to stand up; and then separating her joined hands, before 'allowing' her a Host.
If this isn't rampant Clericalism, I don't know what is.
During the last pontificate, the custom was for a a representative group of communicants to form a queue to be communicated by the Pontiff himself. There was a prie-Dieu; they knelt; they received in os. I thought there were dictinct problems about this, and I am not going to sponsor a discussion about it now. But it made clear that such a mode of receinng the Most Holy was licit, and even commendable.
So this clericalist chappie was not only choosing to humiliate publicly a member of the plebs sancta Dei; he was offering an anti-Benedict gesture at Benedict's own funeral.
Nastier and nastier.
But stay!! What do I hear? The sound of hooves. Yes! It is he! Riding up sword in hand on a purple stallion is
ARTHUR ROCHE!!!
He will undoubtedly have the arrogant clericalist cleric identified and then catechised on
(1) what the Church's rules actually are; and
(2) respecting the rights of the laity; and
(3) pastoral sensitivity.
13 comments:
The clip on Fr Z's blog was not from the Benedict Requiem in Rome.
It , I believe, depicted the Apostolic Nuncio to Costa Rica, no less , behaving as described. One would expect better from such an office holder but we live in dark times.
There was an incident at the Requiem where a man knelt on the flagstones of St Peter's Square in order to receive Holy Communion on the tongue but was refused by a priest. He withdrew without receiving. In fairness, there were many instances of Holy Communion being administered on the tongue without any difficulty during the Requiem.
The behaviour of the prelate as shown on Fr Z's blog was of course quite disgraceful and the poor lady was visibly stunned by it. If he behaved in similar fashion in a common law country she might well have a claim for trespass to the person against him. I cannot speak of the legal position in Costa Rica but ,if similar, he might be taught an expensive lesson in civil and canon law and good manners!
Standing to receive Communion in the hand was the posture and practice of protestant on the continent and also adopted by the Anglicans by 1552 and because Ecumenism we Catholics now imitate the tradition of those who rejected the Catholic Church established by Jesus Christ and we claim continuity while doing such things.
Ecumenism is the Universal Solvent of Tradition.
Hooves... and Roche. When I first read it, I got quite the wrong end of the stick.
Shocking!
But not surprising!
Anyone who knows how the church works knows that this behavior can only happen if there is approval right from the top.
It was no isolated act. The entire funeral was a series of insults and provocative events.
Everyone in the know can tell you that Benedict was forced out. Any intelligent person could deduce the same.
Francis is a usurper. As a "Trumper" myself, I can well understand how an illegitimate person can be in possession of an office. Indeed, Bergoglio reminds me of Joe Biden at every turn.
This has been a problem in the past, both in the Church, and in civil government. Apparently, we still have to obey PF, even though he forced out a reigning pope, but it is a horrible situation.
Much as in the bad old days of Empress Matilda and King Stephen, we are not in for a good time. Disputes over ultimate authority are totally destructive.
The Church will not benefit from a provocative and antagonistic pope who inspires even the most reasonable men to question his legitimacy. The constant parade of vulgarity, insults, lawlessness, betrayal, irreverence and the constant appearance of heresy by PF will only get worse now that Benedict is gone.
I am utterly shocked by the story of the clip you mentioned. Who do they think they are to do this and in whose name?
Long ago I read that the same insolence and abuse was "administered" (in "loving, conciliar accompaniment," no doubt) to perhaps the greatest Catholic philosopher of the 20th century: Professor Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand. If memory serves, I recall that the humble and great thinker was lifted from the communion railing by two acolytes (or ushers?) by his arms. If anyone can spot a defect in my recollection of what I read about this clericalist scandal, I will welcome a correction, of course. I have ever maintained that the frontal attack on the Real Presence by the Modernist heretics has two powerful, symbolic instruments: Holy Communion standing and Its reception in the hand. Nothing could render the reception of the Holy One more banal, more pedestrian and therefore less sacred that cafeteria lines and casual handling of the Host. No wonder the heretics have indeed obtained a great victory: only about 1/3 of Catholics who attend Mass regularly believe in the Real Presence as transubstantiation, a central doctrine of the Deposit of the Faith. In other words, technically they are not really Catholics. Of course, the diabolical "logic" is tight: one stands to pay at the grocery store, to wait for a bus, to make a deposit at the bank while handling with one's hands all sorts of objects in various degrees of casualness; but one takes food in the mouth directly from the hands of the competent in solemn or needful moments (parents, medical staff, priests)---and one kneels before God and his royal/ecclesial representatives on Earth. We seem to have forgotten the vivid lesson of the Old Testament about the ancient Israelites being forbidden, on pain of death, from touching the Ark of the Covenant---a beautiful precursor of the Christian Tabernacle. Destroy the sense of the sacred and, with a bit of time, you destroy the Faith.
At a recent Mass in Dublin, I thought I was going to be denied receiving on the tongue as I knelt down and was chased away by the priest. But then it turned out that those of us desiring to receive traditionally were to wait until the end, when the small group of us could be ministered to with hand sanitizer being liberally applied to the priest's hands between each communicant. No doubt the 21st Century equivalent in the Age of Covid Theater of the Fourteenth Century practice of using a sponge soaked in vinegar to avoid the Black Plague.
These men in the Vatican are, by their actions, so filled with hatred that I wonder if we can put it past them to actually withhold the intention to confect the Eucharist at Mass, so that the congregation is deprived of sacramental Communion. Or worse still, I wonder if we can put it past them to take care to consecrate validly precisely so that they may subject the Body and Blood of Jesus to indignities.
Horrible thoughts; but then, these are horrible men.
"Standing to receive Communion in the hand was the posture and practice of protestant on the continent and also adopted by the Anglicans by 1552."
This is an absurdly ignorant comment. Almost all Lutherans at all times down to the present kneel to receive communion. It is the Reformed Protestants (sometimes termed "Calvinists") who either sit at tables or else stand to receive it. The English Anglican Books of Common Prayer all (1549, 1552, 1559, 1662) mandate kneeling to receive, although in 1552 a statement sometimes termed "the Black Rubric" was appended to the rite denying that the posture betokened any adoration of the elements and repudiating "anye reall and essencial presence" in the elements of Christ's flesh and blood. The phrase "reall and essencial presence" was altered in the 1662 Book to read "any Corporal Presence of Christ's natiral Flesh and Blood." Btw, traditional Lutherans do indeed kneel to adore what they believe to be the bodily presence of Christ's flesh and blook united sacramentally with the bread and wine.
That nuncio is a Friend Of Francis, someone patently with his confidence, doing something our dear Holy Father would not disapprove of. Recall years ago hater of reverence Pope Francis pulling apart the joined hands of an altar boy. Incidences like that are to be expected for a while. Immediately after TC a diocesan priest in Costa Rica itself was dropped into a mental asylum for merely daring to offer the New Order in a reverent and traditional manner. A Christian should pray both for Pope Francis and his violent nuncio, even if it can be a very hard thing to do sincerely, plus obviously Catholics enduring these attacks on the Holy Faith.
Dear Professor Tighe. It is the Reformed Protestants (sometimes termed "Calvinists") who either sit at tables or else stand to receive it.
Thank you for bearing witness that my comment was not entirely absurdly ignorant.
The Destruction of the Roman Rite, Don Pietro Leone.
Page 26
“Similar attitudes towards the real presence were expressed and promoted by Zwingili and Calvin in their
introduction of Communion in the hand to standing communicants: “The practice was to stand and move, to receive Communion…the people would stand in from of the mensa and receive the species with their own hands. Various of the synods of the Calvinist Church of Holland formally forbade Holy Communion white kneeling…
Luth J.R. Communion in the Churches of the Dutch Reformation to the present dat”…quoted in Dominus est, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Liberia Editrice Vatican, 2008
+++++++++++++++++++=
i don't understand your point here:
"Luth J.R. Communion in the Churches of the Dutch Reformation to the present dat"
The "churches of the Dutch Reformation" were Calvinist, not Lutheran, and they did receive communion in the manner which you describe. (It was the Scottish Calvinists who "sat at tables" to receive.) There did emerge in the United Netherlands a small Lutheran denomination that abandoned most of the Catholic practices that most other Lutheran churches for the most part retained so as not to be "mistaken for Catholics" by the Calvinists; however, I am ignorant of its historical communion practices. In 2004 the two largest Dutch Reformed bodies merged with the small Dutch Lutheran body, already united in a common liberalism, to form the Protestant Church of the Netherlands.
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