Food For Thought
So I got my weekly copy of The Tablet in today -- I've got a piece in there about the grand jury report in Philadelphia. As always, the pages of the World's Best Catholic Paper made my week.
An article ran in last week's edition musing about an accidentally spilt chalice. This week, a letter about the column appeared from a Scottish priest which makes for very compelling and beneficial reading.
It will challenge many of you, but it's an appropriate discussion in these days of a Synod on the Eucharist.
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An article ran in last week's edition musing about an accidentally spilt chalice. This week, a letter about the column appeared from a Scottish priest which makes for very compelling and beneficial reading.
It will challenge many of you, but it's an appropriate discussion in these days of a Synod on the Eucharist.
[The column] recalls stories of priests who risked and sometimes lost their lives trying to "rescue" the Blessed Sacrament from a burning church, when a moment's reflection would have made clear that Christ could no more be burned in a fire than he is drowned at the purification of the chalice.OK, so who's gonna take issue with Trent?
Sadly, respect for the Real Presence of Christ continues to be tinged and tainted by what the Dutch theologian Godefridus Snoek calls "pious and pseudo-historical meanderings of the ecclesiastical mind."
The Council of Trent made it quite clear that it is not Reservation, Exposition or Benediction, much less Forty Hours Adoration, which is the reason for the institution of the Blessed Sacrament, but Holy Communion -- "instituted in order that it might be received" (ut sumatur, institutum) cf.Dz 878.
The more the independence of the eucharistic cult, from the reception of Communion within a community Mass, has gathered pace, the more the reverence has been transmuted into awe and sometimes fear -- and this in turn has spilled back into the Mass. To gather up any visible crumbs after Communion, as at the feeding of the five thousand, is reverence -- to worry about any others is scruples, and misplaced veneration. The primacy of the Real Presence is as a working sacrament; it is good that in a recent Instruction to the bishops the Holy See has reminded us that the two candles and simple genuflections at Mass are not to be improved upon for Benediction.
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posted by Rocco Palmo at 19:27
2 Comments:
I understand the dangers of the reification of Grace, but Action does imply Presence. The erosion of an "ontological density" in the Laity's understanding of the holy Eucharist is a grave problem.
Yes there is some pious silliness! I've encountered it. I've also encountered a sinister and impious silliness that goes out of its way to shock the Eucharistic sensibilities of the Faithful in the name of updating. The latter is far more destructive and more more widespread than the former, which is why I'm ready to put up with the occasional odd but well-meaning piety but walk sadly away from the sneering Zwinglianism of much modern Eucharistic theology especially in its populist forms.
A bit off:
I recently read your piece about St Blog's that appeared in The Tablet some weeks ago, and I must say, I was extremely disappointed. You made the Catholic blogosphere seem like a bunch of wackos with their knives in their fists, prepared to slay everyone they don't like. Well, of course there are sometimes harsher voices on the blogosphere, but my own experience was rather that very many people in St Blog's are extremely thoughtful and prepared to repent if they have shown lack of charity. Most bloggers are very far from the red-eyed fanatics you suggested, but rather prayerful, well-read people deeply in love with Jesus Christ and His Church.
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