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PASTOR'S CORNER August 10, 2008 There was a time in the history of the Latin Church when fasting from food and drink from midnight was required in order to receive Communion. So strictly was that fast interpreted that even a drop of water broke it. As a result, very few people went to communion.
In an attempt to encourage more frequent reception, the Church began observing special Sundays for various groups to receive communion in a body. One Sunday was reserved for the Holy Name Society, another for the Christian Mothers, another for the Young Ladies Sodality and there was a Sunday for the school children.
Whether it was the breakfast that always followed or a greater understanding of what communion was, it was the first step to counter the once-a-year reception, a remnant of the Jansenistic era that considered no one ever worthy of receiving Christ in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Gradually the restrictions were relaxed. The fast from midnight was changed to a shorter interval until the present rule of one hour from food and drink before the time of the actual reception of Holy Communion. Water, however, is not considered drink and it may be taken at any time. Another exception exists for those to whom Communion is brought outside of Mass. They are not required to observe any kind of fast, either from food or drink.
One of the by-products of the relaxation of the strict laws of the Eucharistic fast has been the casual attitude surrounding the reception of Holy Communion. By removing the element of sacrifice, the awe and mystery was lost. Instead of kneeling to receive the host on the tongue, people now stand with hands outstretched as though in a bread-line. Many don't even make any sign of recognition that they are receiving their God. While the intention of the Church to encourage frequent communion was noble, the actual experience seems to indicate that it has brought with it some undesirable consequences.
It is one thing to receive the Lord in the sense of consuming Him; it is another thing to receive Him in the sense of accepting the Body and Blood of Christ knowingly and willingly so as to obtain the spiritual benefits. The former indeed "receives" but the latter "bonds" himself to Christ so that Christ lives in him.
Finally, anyone who takes the sacred host while in the state of sin profanes the reception and receives the Body and Blood to his condemnation.
August 3, 2008 Polls suggest that a majority of Catholics still reject the Church’s teaching on contraception. Many have been led to believe that the pope is just another theologian and his opinion is just one among many. When, therefore, they can cite other theologians who hold a different point of view they feel free to choose equally between them. When Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) was published in 1968, some theologians had expected the Pope (Paul VI) to permit the use of the "pill." Their arguments were based on fears of overpopulation, on the need for spacing children and on the desire to provide better opportunities for fewer children in a family. Their arguments were solid and not without merit. They saw the need, as did the Pope, that too many children born into poverty would create great hardship. For them the "pill" and other mechanical contraceptives were the answer. They did not kill a baby already conceived; they merely prevented its conception. Their arguments sounded reasonable which many still espouse as convincing. The truth is, however, that they are using an age-old fallacy by which the end justifies the means. Because the end result is good, the spacing of children, any means to achieve it must be good. That’s the same argument used in creating a right to an abortion. The argument the Pope used went much deeper. It went to the heart of the relationship of the sexes in marriage. Forty years ago the Pope warned that artificial birth control would lessen respect for the dignity of women and open the way for infidelity without consequences. He also predicted that society would suffer; violent crimes on and by women would increase; the divorce rate would climb and sexually transmitted diseases would grow out of control. All of which has happened. If those had been the only reasons for the pope’s opposition there could still be disagreement on the morality of contraception. But because the Church has taught from antiquity that any interference with the transmission of life is a moral evil and therefore an offense against God has the Church clung steadfastly to the teachings of St. Augustine (430) and Ignatius of Alexandria (150). The only Catholic solution to contraception is the use of Natural Family Planning whereby couples use a woman’s infertility period for sexual intimacy. Sometimes God even thwarts NFP to demonstrate that He is still the one in charge.
July 27, 2008 Everybody knows that at death the bodily functions cease and decay sets in. But there are a variety of different beliefs as to what happens next. Atheists believe that death marks the final end of a person’s "being." Agnostics aren’t so sure. Some think that in death a person is re-born as a plant or an animal, or even as a re-incarnation of one’s self. The re-incarnation group believes that the process continues until the state of perfection is achieved. People who have gone through a near-death experience describe it as an out of body sensation in which they can observe themselves as dead, or in the act of dying, in which they are surrounded by a great while light and a feeling of peace from which they do not wish to return to the body. No one, with the exception of Jesus, has returned from death to describe what it feels like to die. None of us will know what death is like until we experience it first hand. What we do know we have to take on faith. From the experience of Jesus on the cross, and from our own personal experiences, we know that the process of dying can be painful and slow. Nothing is more agonizing than to see a loved one die a slow painful death. Unlike the atheists and secular humanists, who do not believe in a spiritual world, the Church teaches that the human person is composed of body and soul and death separates the soul from the body. While the body ultimately goes back to the dust from which it originally came, the soul continues to live on forever. Death for the Catholic is not an end, but a new beginning. It is not the end of the person, but a change in that person’s existence. It is a transition from an earthly life to an eternal life, either in heaven with God or in hell with the devil and his cohorts. Catholics believe that there is an intermediate interval for those who have died and have not yet been fully purified. It is called purgatory, a time of purgation until the soul has been completely purified. Most Protestants do not accept the Catholic position, but the Catholic Church points to the Book of Maccabees wherein prayers and votive offerings were made in atonement for the sins of those who had died. Scripture tells us that in the end there will be only heaven and hell. Before we can enter into the kingdom every trace of sin must be eliminated. This is exactly what takes place in purgatory. Purgatory is a temporary state that ceases to exist after the last judgment.
July 20, 2008 As Catholics we believe that Jesus gave us an inestimable gift on the night before He died when He instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist and told His apostles to continue to do the same in remembrance of Him. He found a way to remain with them even after He ascended into heaven. For the last two thousand years He has remained with His people through the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Every time that we gather to celebrate the sacred liturgy we participate in that one event that took place at the Last Supper. We do not repeat the event in a sort of memorial of what happened on that solemn Passover Supper. We enter into it as the one continuous event that goes on forever. Each time we come to Mass we do not celebrate a new sacrifice, even though from our point of view it is a distinct act. We simply enter into the one sacrifice that was begun at the Last Supper and will continue without interruption into eternity.
This understanding is very different from the way most Protestants look on the Eucharist. In their view the Sacrament of the Eucharist is a memorial of what happened at the Last Supper. Even though Martin Luther retained a belief in the reality of Christ's presence in Communion, his later followers did not. They began to teach that it was not the words of Christ, spoken by a priest that changed the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. They held that the "faith" of the person receiving the host caused Christ to be present to them. It is to Luther's credit that he insisted on the strict interpretation of the words of Jesus that at the Last Supper Jesus gave Himself, body and blood, soul and divinity to the Apostles and told them to do the same in remembrance of Him.
From the time of the Apostles the Eucharistic celebration was the center of Christian worship. At first it was celebrated in "house" churches, but as congregations grew larger it was necessary to establish larger centers. During the Era of Persecution Christians used the catacombs as places of worship until the 4th century when Christianity was proclaimed the official religion of the empire. In the Middle Ages (10th – 16th century) the great European cathedrals were built that still stand as monuments of the intense faith of the people.
At the heart of that faith was the firm belief that Jesus was truly present in the Church, not only with His words, but with His Body and Blood. He found a unique way to remain with His people.
July 13, 2008 All of us during the course of a lifetime will face situations requiring decisions based on what our consciences tell us. Should one attend the wedding of a family member who is being married outside the Church? Should the plug be pulled from a machine that is keeping someone artificially alive; or should we grant sanctuary to an undocumented worker who is in the country illegally? The answer to these and other similar questions ultimately rests with the dictates of individual consciences, some of which may be either correct or erroneous. To put it quit simply, one must always follow a right conscience and may follow an erroneous one when the error is due to ignorance of the truth. Thus the person, through no fault of his or her own, comes to the conclusion that cheating on a test, or lying on an application for employment, is permitted on the grounds that others have gotten away with it, might try to justify such an act. The question becomes even knottier when acts legal in civil law are at odds with the moral law. Such are the laws that have legalized abortion and same-sex marriage, as well as acts like contraception and cohabitation, which are not the subject of law. The Church teaches us that the education of a well-formed conscience is the task of a lifetime. The first principle in forming a right conscience is to have as a general intention always to do what is right in the eyes of God. That may sound simple, but it is not. Because of the effects of fallen human nature forces fostering our self-interest tend to dominate us. In difficult matters of conscience the official teaching of the Church must always be followed over any personal opinion of a theologian. Ever since Vatican II priests and theologians have sometimes taken positions contrary to the official statements of the Church. Twenty years ago it was not uncommon for some priests to allow divorced and remarried people to continue receiving communion, contrary to the Church law. Anyone acting on the basis of such advice would have followed an erroneous conscience, but might at the same time have been justified in doing so because of bad advice from a source that was trusted. Oftentimes ignorance is the major source of an erroneous conscience. To overcome such ignorance education in the moral law is an absolute necessity. It is not enough to be able to recite the Ten Commandments; it is more necessary to know how to interpret them. WHY CATHOLIC? to the rescue!
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