 |
| No role, lack of inclusion. |
Hello! It's Traddie Tuesday, the day I wax lyrical on traditional Catholic doctrine and praxis. Currently I have been posting my old Prairie Messenger columns, hoping they will find a more congenial audience. When I run out, I will write the last twelve I planned for the column. Knowing Canadian Catholic politics, I didn't think I'd have the chance to write more than 26.
It was great fun writing for The Prairie Messenger, waiting to be fired. That doesn't sound very professional, and I certainly didn't want to be fired. However, I had already been through the grinding wheels of the Spirit of Vatican II (not to be confused with the Holy Spirit), and you only die once. After that, you pop up every time you get knocked down again, like an inflatable clown.
 |
| No role, lack of inclusion. |
Singing the New Song is expected of graduates of Canadian theology schools, and life can be very interesting for those graduates who discover that they are traditionalists who love the Church and are not interested in exchanging her for a new one. One of them told me he understood that he would have to suffer for the rest of his life, and I believe him. Nevertheless, time is on our side, to say nothing of all the devotions we have picked out of the recycling bin.
A Hard Teaching
It was twenty years ago. I was a teenager, picketing an abortion
clinic with my friends. Across the street were fans of the clinic,
hoping to outstay us. Who could hold out longer? It was a dreary
game, especially on cold days.
“It’s Holy Thursday,” shouted an abortion clinic supporter.
“Shouldn’t you be in church?”
There were various jeers from their side of the street and then:
“You know what? They eat their God. Ewwwwww!”
“Ewwww!”
“Very truly, I tell you,” Jesus had said almost two thousand
years before, in front of a rather different but still restive crowd,
“unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,
you have no life in you. Those who eat my blood and drink my blood
have eternal life, and I will raise them on the last day; for my
flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh
and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (John 6: 52-56).
Cannibalism, then as now, was considered disgusting. Some of Jesus’s
own disciples started murmuring, “This is a hard teaching; who can
accept it?” They took his words literally, and Jesus did not say
they had misunderstood. Many of them left. The Twelve, however,
stayed.
Today many Catholics are confused about the Holy Eucharist, but the
Church’s teaching has not changed. Like the Orthodox Church, and
not like the reformed traditions, faith-filled Catholics hold that
during the Eucharistic celebration, the bread and wine, “by the
words of Christ and the invocation of the Holy Spirit become Christ’s
Body and Blood” (CCC 1324). The body, blood, soul and divinity of
Jesus Christ are present in the consecrated host and chalice. “This
is my body” said Jesus at the Last Supper according to Matthew,
Mark, Luke and Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. “This is
my blood.”
“Whoever, therefore,” says St. Paul, “eats the bread or drinks
the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the
body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of
the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Cor 11:27-28).
St. Justin Martyr, in his letter to the Roman Senate around 150 AD,
denies that the Eucharist is merely bread and wine but the flesh and
blood of Jesus made flesh. He explains, “… [T]his food is called
among us Εὐχαριστία [Eucharist], of which no one is
allowed to partake but the [person] who believes that the things
which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing
that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is
so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common
drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our
Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh
and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the
food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our
blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and
blood of that Jesus who was made flesh” (Apology, 1, 66).
The Eucharist is also the symbol of our one-ness in the Lord. We
Catholics, Orthodox and (in an imperfect way, which precludes their
reception of the Holy Eucharist) other Christians are, symbolically,
the Body of Christ. Perhaps this was underemphasized before I was
born; it is certainly stressed now. At times this focus on us, the
symbolic Body of Christ, has been at the expense of reverence towards
the literal Body of Christ.
This irreverence is unfortunate and unnecessary. There is no war
between the symbol and the sacrament. Meanwhile, whereas we can see
the community, our imperfect senses cannot see either the humanity or
the divinity in Holy Communion. We rely on faith. Irreverence erodes
faith. Reverence fosters it.
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a reverent hymn to the Holy Eucharist called “Adoro Te Devote.” I love it because it confronts the divide between our senses and our faith. Here are two verses of one translation:
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a reverent hymn to the Holy Eucharist called “Adoro Te Devote.” I love it because it confronts the divide between our senses and our faith. Here are two verses of one translation:
O
Godhead hid, devoutly I adore Thee,
Who truly art within the forms before me;
To Thee my heart I bow with bended knee,
As failing quite in contemplating Thee.
Who truly art within the forms before me;
To Thee my heart I bow with bended knee,
As failing quite in contemplating Thee.
Sight, touch, and taste in Thee are each deceived;
The ear alone most safely is believed:
I believe all the Son of God has spoken,
Than Truth's own word there is no truer token.
Apparently belief
in the True Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is on the wane.
If this is true, Catholics are being failed by our priests, our
catechists and, dare I say it, our liturgists, too.
 |
| No role. |
 |
Wyłączona.
|
You're a talented writer, Seraphic. This column should be compulsorily read at every Mass around the world, perhaps on the Feast of Corpus Christi, as far too many of us Catholics are complacent about the nature of the Eucharist - I know I was when younger!
ReplyDeletePity the Messenger didn't continue your column, but I understand the pressures your editor would have been under - Canada is one of the most liberal nations on Earth, and that has it's influence inside the local Church.
Southern Bloke.
Thank you! Yes, I believe the editor was squeezed and squeezed until she couldn't take it any more.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read these columns (and now one of the complaints), I thank God that I was born when I was. I think I was very lucky to have been brought up when some 'resurgent' traditional ideas were floating - that it was okay to have the occasional sprinkling of Latin, a priest actually owned a biretta, or a school which actually taught us our prayers and our faith (although sometimes on the fluffy end, but that really wasn't their fault). I know people whine about the 70s being the worst time for the church, but I've really thought it was the 80s and early 90s where all the worst of the problems occurred.
ReplyDeleteThe really sad thing is, none of your posts have said anything truly revolutionary (or mad-tradish either). This is the faith and really the faith of all Catholics: trad, charismatic or otherwise. You've got to wonder why those who didn't like your column hated their history and traditions so much.
Yes. So far I have posted one column on "Gosh, how come my father's experience of growing Catholic was so different from mine?", one on the Asperges, one on Benediction, one on Confession, and one on the Eucharist. Not exactly on the level of "the Pope should wear red shoes", are they? That said, given when the letter appeared, it looked to me that she panicked at the first column, or at most the first two.
DeleteMust have been. Particularly because your tone struck me as just admiring the good things about our traditions rather than a call for all these things to be implemented immediately before work begins on restoring the 1917 Code of canon law and with it sex-segregated pews.
DeleteJust admiring the good things about our traditions can be considered a counter-revolutionary act.
DeleteMeanwhile, I have to admit that I did not hold back from a little gentle snarking, e.g. "The Dies Irae, which was sung at Requiem Masses for hundreds of years, depicts Judgment Day so dramatically that it inspired some of the greatest music ever written and was discarded as unpastoral in 1970." Hee hee hee!
DeleteI enjoyed your columns at the time & was impressed you and the editor were able to hold out as long as you did. It was amazing to me how straightforward descriptions & happiness toward old traditions got so much criticism.
ReplyDeleteI just don't get how the Church was able to survive without pastoral lay associates.
Woot! ;-)
ReplyDelete