Hello Folks, (all 3 or 4 of you, Susan, Bear, Lynda, Nathalie, Victoria!)
I'm not really back yet. I know the Synod on the family is beginning and I should just be praying and fasting! But--speaking about whom should be denied Holy Communion---something happened to me on Saturday, 4 October, which I earlier only suspected was the stuff of urban legend. My apologies to all you who have suffered this embarrassment...now I know such things really do happen!
I was visiting a Catholic Church in a large city not far from Corpus Christi....(I am being deliberately vague) where a young-ish (about 50 years old) and ebullient Catholic priest refused me Communion for kneeling.
'Friend, please stand for Communion'...
'I can wait, Father',
pause pause...
I surrender and move on.
Spiritual Communion for me!
I have his email address and am going to write him. I want you all to follow along to see if I utterly fail in my attempt to win him over. I will be 'scrubbing' references which might allow outsiders to identify either 'Father Friend' or yours truly, Sorry!!
My first email, minus the [scrubbed] material looks like what is posted below in bold italics, ..... When and if Father Friend replies, I'll make a new post of it....
Hello Father Friend!
I worshiped with your [SCRUBBED] Catholic Community on Saturday 04 October.
By way of background, Father, I am a[RAPPORT BUILDING SCRUBBED]. I see you are also a [SCRUBBED]therefore I hope you will not take my words the wrong-way, but more as grumbling coming from one [SCRUBBED] to another J!
I think you probably know why I am writing, but in case you don’t please forgive me the recap: My [SCRUBBED]is in your town and I live some [SCRUBBED]miles distant. I was just getting back to my hotel and was still in my work uniform, barely in time to make your Saturday vigil. I was edified by your sermon, your celebration of the Holy Mass. I love that your bulletin emphasized October as our Lady’s month and many other things…..however when it came time for Holy Communion….as you know-unless you do this kind of thing quite often and routinely…I was shocked when you refused to give me Holy Communion!
What was my crime, my public sin? I knealt to receive our Lord.
Father, again by way of background perspective, this is the first time, that any priest has (ever!) made a public example of me at the Communion rail-- never in the multitude of parishes – Lifeteen, guitar, Pentecostal, 80’s style, etc. -to which my professional travels have taken me in the U.S. and abroad, certainly never by any [SCRUBBED]!
My purpose in writing this letter is not to cry about the embarrassment you caused me, as I believe such things should be ‘cheerfully endured’ and there from benefited, but instead I want to find out why you acted the way you did. As I see it, Father, we could not have both been acting rightly. Either :
–a- Father was wrong to deny me Communion
or –b- I was wrong to kneel for Communion.
I do not rule out the latter possibility, but if you will convince me that it is wrong or forbidden to kneel at one’s most intimate encounter with Jesus Christ, (an venerable and august tradition) then I feel you do owe me an explanation! If my wide-spread experience mentioned above is in any way representative of things in general, I am afraid your action leaves you quite alone on this. That per se does not mean you are wrong!
However neither do I rule out the former -a- as also a possibility, i.e. that Father-acting in good conscience- might have been wrong. In which case please be assured that I am determined –as one of your very own order once put it- “never to despair your recovery” and will vigorously try to win you over to my side!
Do pray for me and do know that I am praying for you!
[[[FATHER WRITES A GOOD REPLY]]
Good morning K.C.
Thank you for your personal and faith-filled message. I appreciate your
message and tone, and hope that my reply will match your sincerity.
Saturday I did not intend to deny you Holy Communion, nor to cause undue
attention to you. I intended to follow the norms as given to our
archdiocese and the Catholic Church in the USA.
Let me first state that I had just talked about the reception of Holy
Communion to the three congregations one week prior to Saturday, and that
was. The whole of the instruction in the link comes from the United States
Catholic Conference of Bishops. This group, according to the General
Instruction of the roman Missal is authorized by the Vatican's Congregation
for Divine Worship to set the practice for the reception of Holy Communion.
http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/order-of-mass/liturgy-of-th
e-eucharist/the-reception-of-holy-communion-at-mass.cfm
The text is below.
The points which I made were the unity of the body of believers in the
procession and the reception of Holy Communion, the proper display of
reverence (bow) and the courtesy of opening one's mouth or holding out one's
hands to receive Our Lord.
With respect to kneeling. Are you wrong to kneel? In a word, yes. It's not a
sin, nor a crime.
The bishops state, "In the United States, the body of Bishops determined
that Communion should be received standing,"
In addition to the principle of unity, we have no Communion rail and the
concern about foot traffic and safety is real. In other places/circumstances
kneeling is fine. I ask you to read the bishop's instruction and take to
heart their message, particularly where they state: "These norms may
require some adjustment on the part of those who have been used to other
practices, however the significance of unity in posture and gesture as a
symbol of our unity as members of the one body of Christ should be the
governing factor in our own actions."
With respect to your question, "Am I wrong to deny you Communion?" I did not
deny you Holy Communion, nor was it my intention to deny you Holy Communion.
I was surprised by your departure when I said to you "please rise to receive
Communion." As such I had no opportunity to address the matter r reception
of Communion. ask you to see me after Mass. There was an added challenge
this past Saturday in particular because of a blessing of a parishioner who
is to [SCRUBBED] this week and the purposeful procession to the parish dinner at
the other chapel. I am sorry that I did not see you afterwards.
In addition to being obedient, I believe that I am a priest who should look
at people with a pastoral approach of applying the norms. It's a challenge
to be pastorally sensitive and instructive during the reception of the Holy
Communion. Since you desire to receive Holy Communion kneeling, I counsel
you to bring this up to a priest before Mass, asking for an accommodation. I
have made pastoral accommodations only for [SCRUBBED]
but I do not do this without knowing this request in advance. Politely put
and respectfully intended, the responsibility rests on those who do not
follow the Church's norm. What I ask is that they be the last person in the
procession to receive Holy Communion. I extend this accommodation to you
with the note to politely ask for the accommodation before Mass begins.
At Mass I mentioned that I am a Jesuit. Having professed final vows[SCRUBBED]years
ago, I do take the vow of obedience seriously. Being a Jesuit, I know that
if I do not educate the congregation about general instructions for the
liturgy, I'm not act responsibly as a priest. I even could possibly be
giving the false impression, "Oh, he's a Jesuit - those Jesuits." There are
very few of us in the [SCRUBBED] who are active and I don't want to
make it harder for more Jesuits to serve in [SCRUBBED] .
The more that I'm put into a place of not publically following general
instructions, the heavier the weight I feel for not giving proper
instruction, guidance and pastoral response.
A line from today's morning prayer called attention to God's mercy. In that
spirit I send you my fraternal regards as one[SCRUBBED]to another,
and my paternal care as pastor: that any lacking on our part be made up for
by our union in Christ and the prayers of the saints, who keep us from
spiritual harm.
Are you still at []SCRUBBED? If you are open to a cuppa joe or a talk, I would
like that.
Father Friend
[[[ME AGAIN]]]]
Hello again, Father!
You wrote me such a nice letter!
Incidentally if all goes well, I should still be in [SCRUBBED]about once a month, and[SCRUBBED] should be able to make the Mass at [SCRUBBED]. Just look for me at the end of your Communion line J. You do have a way about you…it even seemed to me –although I was pretty steamed at you at the time—that you were gently encouraging your parishioners to save their socializing for outside the church. I already began to see: ‘here is a priest trying to do the right thing and lead his sheep gently towards a more reverent attitude’.
Where were we? Oh yes! The USCCB ‘regulation’. Well, Father you already have made a pastoral exception for my sake and I sincerely appreciate it! You Jesuits! I’ll take the money and run!!
To tell the truth, I didn’t start kneeling for Communion until after Pope Benedict’s symbolic act on the Feast of Corpus Christi 2008. It was then that he re-instituted the use of kneelers for his Masses. [SCRUBBED] saw this—‘[SCRUBBED]—that was enough for her and she started kneeling and eventually I got up the nerve---(not that it should have taken much since some people at the Cathedral here have always knealt)—and then one Sunday I genuflected before our Lord and I just stayed down, put both knees down and waited. When the EMHC gently placed the Host on my tongue….Father, I just cannot describe it but I felt like …like this was nothing routine or ordinary! That maybe this was helping me show Jesus intense devotion and total surrender, total trust to Him that He deserved! Not that I have intense devotion…but kneeling helped remind me that I should? I apologize for my clumsy wording. But I think you understand…
Where were we? Darnit! Now I have to get back to that ‘regulation’. As per your advice, I looked it up and got very sad…and confused. We kneelers rejoiced when we heard that the 2012 GIRM had removed the stricture that we must be ‘nagged at’, ‘catechized’ every time we get caught kneeling for Holy Communion…..the USCCB’s good news for kneelers can be found right here…..
5. What does the Missal say about the posture of the faithful when receiving Holy Communion? What about Communion in the hand?
Both of these questions are covered in no. 160 of the GIRM. It states clearly there that the “norm” established for the United States for reception of Holy Communion is standing. In the 2003 GIRM, it stated that no one should be refused Communion if they kneel, but that afterward they should be properly catechized. In the current edition, the exhortation to catechesis is removed and the exception to the norm of standing is left to the discretion of the faithful: “unless an individual member of the faithful wishes to receive Communion while kneeling.” The Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum, no. 91, is then cited.<<<<<
So , recapping:
1) in 2002 the USCCB said everybody stands or else, then
2) in 2003 the GIRM says it’s ok to kneel, but with mandatory corrective training afterwards
3) in 2012 USCCB, introducing the 2012 corrected GIRM, said no more corrective training for kneelers, then
4) in 2014 the USCCB is back to saying everybody stands or else?!!
I can’t wait to tell [SCRUBBED]]
Frankly, Father, such vacillations vex me greatly!! When, pardon the term, bureaucrats try to choreograph us and flip us back and forth it starts to feel like we’re the property of ‘1984’ or ‘Animal Farm’ despots where every few years the common folk are obliged to forget the past if they know what’s good for them!!……
[[ALL FOR NOW!!}
KC,
I appreciated your note and have similar thoughts about liturgical practices. Thanks for sharing that profound moment of receiving Holy Communion.
One reality about educating people is that [SCRUBBED] parishes are stable/static places (who says and who hears what, how are congregations catechized... and catechesis as we know is more than passing information.
The big push from liturgist is for reinforcing/finding/creating unity among the congregation in the procession and reception of Holy Communion while reinforcing the reverence due Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist . Hence, in 2011 the bishops stated that the norm posture of kneeling at the Lamb of God and reverent bow before receiving. I'm reminded that the Holy Fatherrecently brought up the sign of unity as a witness to love. Unity isn'tuniformity, but we search for a real way of living out as the Churchteaches.
There's a Latin phrase for when people try to make things work, but noteverything turns out as it should have: 'ecclesia supplet" - "The Church inits faith provides."
Blessings,
Hello again, Father!
Thank you for reading my previous email. If you suffer this one as well the previous you should get some real time off purgatory!!
I am afraid I must apologize for not being clear in my previous letter. What I earlier tried and failed to say was that I don’t think your undated USCCB policy link you sent me is the current regulation regarding reception of Holy Communion. I do think the link is the USCCB’s 2002 policy somehow resuscitated on the USCCB’s website in error. My reasons for thinking this are:
1. If the link were really meant to “trump” the USCCB CDW’s 2012 letter, the 2011 GIRM section 160 and the Vatican’s 2004 Redemptionis Sacramentum, no. 91--all which state it is up to the individual communicant whether or not to kneel for Communion--then the undated USCCB policy link would at least make a reference to the ‘former(s)’ and why it now had the authority to contradict and supersede all of them.
2. your undated USCCB policy link parrots the 2002 USCCB policy verbatim with no updates whatsoever, ergo the undated USCCB policy link *is* the outdated 2002 USCCB policy and came—before either of the GIRMs and the Vatican’s 2004 R. S. document and the USCCB 2012 CDW letter, hence the undated USCCB policy link has itself been superseded.
3. ‘the Body of bishops determined that Communion should be received standing’ the link’s language per se gives a clue that this document is outdated. It strikes me as very ‘clerical’, i.e. the USCCB trumpets orders it expects the laity to obey without question. I think clericalism was more our mood before the abuse scandals broke and the Faithfull’s trust shattered.. If the undated USCCB policy link really were written recently, I don’t think the bishops would be presenting themselves so stridently.
With all respect due to a sincere, dedicated, Jesuit Father, a ‘blackrobe’, [SCRUBBED] I am still very determined to get to the bottom of this. I will guard your privacy and that of your parish, but I do intend to write Archbishops [SCRUBBED] and Kurtz to ask their Graces what is going on with their USCCB website. Unless, Father, you yourself have a connection in that office, then-in that case- I will leave it up to you. You and I are not the only ones to be taken in. The link’s Confusion is widespread. I just did a casual search and Deacon Kandra’s blog and various others also used this link just recently to remind everyone how to receive Communion.
Very respectfully and in Christ,
Pray for me!
K.C.
