If he had the power, I have no doubt he would be condemning traditional Catholics to be burned at the stake.
Not so Grand Inquisitor
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Posted in Open Thread:
When Jesus said to Peter: “What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Christ was referring to the forgiveness of sins and the Transubstantiation of the bread and the wine. Christ was not referring to eternal Truth.
Christ was referring to temporal authority: ordaining men to the Sacrament of Holy Orders, receiving the vows of consecrated persons abstaining from meat on Holy Days, fasting, spiritual disciplines, even excommunications, dispensations and the withholding of absolution in the Sacrament of Penance.
Authority in itself is subject to love. Christ washed the feet of His Apostles, as a slave would wash the feet of his Master. The Pope is the “Servant of the servants of God”, unless of course if the Pope rejects his work as the Vicar of Christ, as was done by Pope Francis.
This rejection as the Vicar of Christ invalidates his commission to bind and to loose, as in the refusal of the traditional Latin Mass. As Edmund Campion stated: “When you reject tradition you reject all of your ancestors.”
The USCCB approved its adaptation of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal over two decades ago, and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments confirmed its use. GIRM #160 states:
“The norm established for the United States of America is that Holy Communion is to be received standing, unless an individual member of the faithful wishes to receive Communion while kneeling. (Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Instruction, Redemptionis Sacramentum 25 March 2004, no. 91)”
Redemptionis Sacramentum no. 91 goes on to state “Therefore, it is not licit to deny Holy Communion to any of Christ’s faithful solely on the grounds, for example, that the person wishes to receive the Eucharist kneeling or standing”.
I suppose His Excellency would defend his petty tyranny by explaining that he isn’t forbidding giving Holy Communion to people who choose to kneel to receive, he’s just making it more difficult for many and impossible for some. This absurd little man reminds me of the stereotype of ‘Karen-from-the-HOA’, drunk with power, enforcing idiotic and imaginary rules, and making everyone around her miserable.
But he can’t ban kneeling itself, wouldn’t be wonderful if everyone knelt.
Who’s will be done?
Another “Martin” Luther we don’t need.
The visible contradiction will be seen in the mirror and his confession will set him free. Once freed from himself the peace which he lacks now will enter in and an authentic love of neighbor will overtake him. Conversions. We are to be about conversions….for ourselves then for all our neighbors. May the Bishop find that peace this Christmas.
I read his document which had much emphasis on the “Eucharist Procession” to receive the Eucharist. To my mind, he misunderstands the procession. At the mass, the procession is not the movement that is important (my philosophy teachers were all about the mistake of act over being in today’s world, Thomists, all of them), it is the end point, communion, that is important. Where an action takes precedence over the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, and its reception, a priest or bishop is in trouble theologically.
Receiving the Eucharist is the primary encounter that is taking place at mass, not the encounter with “community”. It is a removal of Most Holy Trinity, and especially Jesus, as the center point of all that happens. These rules that Bishop Martin are imposing are centered upon the person and the behavior at mass, which is not why we’re there. We attend mass because of Jesus, to receive Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament, not to engage in a choreographed act, where postures become more important the receiving communion.
This abysmal sacramental theology will end the moment Bishop Martin leaves. It’s like when Cardinal Mahoney mandated his terrible liturgical letter “We Gather Together” on the Los Angeles Archdiocese, once he was out, everyone threw their copies away and went back to what they did before.
Doesn’t “normative” imply ‘not always’? He makes the preferred, mandatory. When did standing become preferred anyway?
The bishops are begging for widespread noncompliance.
A Francis present that will keep on giving over the next 20 plus years……what a disaster.
The Bishops Conference only said that Communion standing is “the norm.” That sounds like descriptive language of what usually happens in most places at the moment, not a legal decree that standing is “always required from now on.” Nor that kneeling is forbidden by law.
What law has ever been passed with language like this?
“It is the norm that ladies take sugar in their coffee.”
“It is the norm that bank employees do not remove other peoples’ money from the vault.”
It doesn’t sound like the language of legislation. It doesn’t sound like a law.
This is a guy who has said women shouldn’t wear veils because they are an outmoded, excessive sign of piety; while wearing his franciscan habit.
My nearest parish, which doesn’t have an altar rail, has recently started to have the parish spread along the length of the sanctuary for Communion. Four kneelers in the center, most everyone else kneeling the same as they would at a traditionally-designed church. It’s an increasingly Hispanic population, fwiw.
He needs a month of empty pews and the accompanying baskets. Or trade him for a Methodist janitor.
@ Matthew.: Very interesting observation, about the contemporary focus on act over being (the reverse being the Thomistic focus). I would like to hear further explanation of that matter.
Another fatal error today seems to be the praise of modern existence (existential meaning as the ultimate—the only?—end: the existentialists’ position) to the point of eclipsing essence (intrinsic meaning of man as an image of God: Thomistic position).
One can easily see where both errors have led.
Steve Phoenix: What I see is that process (act) has become more important than the reality (being). We can see this is in this matter of the communion procession. The procession is transitory, it’s going from one place to another, it is a means, an action, to get to a stationary point, communion, the receiving of the Most Blessed Eucharist. Now, Bishop Martin thinks that posture and movement are more important than receiving (that’s way he things posture is so important, he sees it as the process by which we receive communion), which to my Thomistic brain, seems completely backwards. The most important thing about communion is communion, the end point, the “being” of the whole process. That is why his anger against “trads,” who think it is the receiving that is the main thing, not how we get to there.
We can see this in the whole synodality being hoisted upon the Church, it makes the journey together the main point, which is a liminal state. I mean, how crazy is the idea that we needed a synod on synodality! I mean really? a process for a process, where the end point is never defined? Like I said, my old Scholastic philosophy teachers must be turning in their graves. It all sounds cool, like “grasshopper, the answer is in your question.” No it’s not, the answer is the important reality, not the process.
@ Matthew: Very interesting. “ ..a process for a process.”
Procession v. Communion: Actual “Communion [with Jesus Christ Whose essence is present “in” the Eucharist (pardon the preposition, language fails) not the end, but subordinated to “the journey together.” How “60’s.” Forever. Interesting analysis.
Of course, you realize Bp. Martin thinks not just that we are irrelevant , speaking a dead philosophical language: but that we are both quite mad.
Yeah, he would think it’s crazy, but Thomism makes so much darn sense.