Posted on 08/02/2009 9:32:08 AM PDT by NYer
"Whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and of the Blood of the Lord... For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Body of the Lord" - 1 Corinthians 11:27,28
Pope Benedict to Catholics:
Kneel and Receive on the Tongue Only
Pope Benedict XVI does not want the faithful receiving Communion in their hand nor does he want them standing to receive Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. According to Vatican liturgist, Monsignor Guido Marini, the pope is trying to set the stage for the whole church as to the proper norm for receiving Communion for which reason communicants at his papal Masses are now asked to kneel and receive on the tongue.
The Holy Father's reasoning is simple: "We Christians kneel before the Blessed Sacrament because, therein, we know and believe to be the presence of the One True God." (May 22, 2008)
According to the pope the entire Church should kneel in adoration before God in the Eucharist. "Kneeling in adoration before the Eucharist is the most valid and radical remedy against the idolatries of yesterday and today" (May 22, 2008)
The pope's action is in accord with the Church's 2000 year tradition and is being done in order to foster a renewed love and respect for the Eucharist which presently is being mocked and treated with contempt. The various trends and innovations of our time (guitar liturgy, altar girls, lay ministers, Communion in the hand) have worked together to destroy our regard for the Eucharist, thus advancing the spiritual death of the church. After all, the Eucharist is the very life and heartbeat of the Mystical Body around which the entire Church must revolve.
Kneeling also coincides with the Church's centuries old ordinance that only the consecrated hands of a priest touch the Body of Christ in Holy Communion. "To priests alone has been given power to consecrate and administer to the faithful, the Holy Eucharist." (Council of Trent) This teaching is beautifully expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica: "Because out of reverence towards this sacrament, nothing touches it, but what is consecrated; hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest's hands, for touching this sacrament."
It is for reason that Pope Paul VI in his May 1969 pastoral letter to the world's bishops reaffirmed the Church's teaching on the reception of Communion, stating that: "This method on the tongue must be retained." (Memoriale Domini) This came in response to the bishops of Holland who started Communion in the hand in defiance of the centuries old decree from the Council of Rouen (650 A.D.) where this practice was condemned as sacrilegious. "Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layperson, but only in their mouths." To date this prohibition has never been overturned legally.
Today Communion in the hand is carried on illegally and has become a major tool of the enemy to destory the Faith throughout the world. For this practice serves no other purpose than to warp our conception of Jesus Christ and nourish a contempt for the sacred mysteries. It's no wonder St. Basil referred to Communion in the hand as "a grave fault."
That is to say, Communion in the hand is not tied with Catholic tradition. This practice was first introduced to the Church by the heretical Arians of the 4th century as a means of expressing their belief that Christ was not divine. Unfortunately, it has served to express the same in our time and has been at the very heart of the present heresy and desecration that is rampant throughout the universal Church. If we have 'abuse' problems today it is because we're abusing the Sacrament - it's backfiring on us!
Thanks to Communion in the hand, members of satanic cults are now given easy access to come into the Church and take the Host so that they bring it back to their covens where it is abused and brutalized in the ritualistic Black Mass to Satan. They crush the Host under their shoes as a mockery to the living God, and we assist it with our casual practice? Amongst themselves the satanists declare that Communion in the hand is the greatest thing that ever happened to them, and we do nothing to stop it?
Hence, the Holy Father is doing his part to try to purge the Church of abuse and we as members of Christ are called upon to assist him. For your encouragement we include the following quotation from Cardinal Llovera, the new prefect for the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments speaking to Life Site News on July 22, 2009: "It is the mission of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments to work to promote Pope Benedict's emphasis on the traditional practices of liturgy, such as reception of Communion on the tongue while kneeling."
Also worth considering is the recent decree from Cardinal Caffarra, the Archbishop of Bologna Italy, forbidding the practice of Communion in the hand: "Many cases of profanation of the Eucharist have occurred, profiting by the possibility to receive the consecrated Bread on one’s palm of the hand... Considering the frequency in which cases of irreverent behavior in the act of receiving the Eucharist have been reported, we dispose that starting from today in the Metropolitan Church of St. Peter, in the Basilica of St. Petronius and in the Shrine of the Holy Virgin of St. Luke in Bologna the faithful are to receive the consecrated Bread only from the hands of the Minister directly on the tongue." (from his decree on the reception of the Eucharist, issued April 27, 2009)
Technically all bishops and clergy are bound to follow the Holy Father's directive on this issue, but in the meantime the faithful are not obliged to wait for the approval of their bishop in order to kneel for God. The directives of the Holy Father are not subject to the veto or scrutiny of the bishops and therefore all pastors and laity have a right and duty to put these directives into practice for the edification of their communities.
**“Technically all bishops and clergy are bound to follow the Holy Father’s directive on this issue, but in the meantime the faithful are not obliged to wait for the approval of their bishop in order to kneel for God. The directives of the Holy Father are not subject to the veto or scrutiny of the bishops and therefore all pastors and laity have a right and duty to put these directives into practice for the edification of their communities.”**
Amen!
“No doubt that was the culture of the Latin Church even in the 9th century AD, but that’s not how the Church functioned, although by that the 9th century and the Photian Councils the cracks were visible and obvious.”
I gave you quotes from Sacred Scripture and you wouldn’t accept them Then I gave you quotes from an Early Church Father and you still won’t accept it.
Read my last post #140.
PS: There are Traditions and there are traditions. I believe you’re confusing them.
“The services in those days were in Greek even in Rome, so Rome worshiped in the Greek tradition. St. Basil the Great would not have made his Divine Liturgy a century later contrary to the Greek tradition, which is receiving the Eucharist standing.”
Ask a priest from the Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral in Boston disagrees agree with you:
http://holytrinityorthodox.org/ask_the_priest/index.htm
...because he used it in answer to one of his questions. I guess you need to let him know he’s “making things up as he goes along”.
I don’t see any papal or vatican directive in your #141.
The Tradition of the Church is that to which, not one, but all fathers agreed (consensus patrum); St. John Chrysostom taught that Mary have sinned, and St. Gregory of Nyssa at one time taught universal salvation. They were clearly in error as was St. Augustine on a a number of things.
PS: There are Traditions and there are traditions. I believe you’re confusing them
I don't think so. Here is the article on Eastern Holy Tradition and what it entails. Please note, that the Holy Tradition is simply the life of the Church. And that includes discipline as well as dogmatic pronouncements. Please read the section on the Bible and the fact that the east does not hold the Bible.
Whatever the Latin Church believes and practices now, and that changes so often who can keep track, it is not what the Church believed and practiced and proclaimed in the first millennium, some 9th century monk's personal adoration of the pope notwithstanding.
LOL!
Erie?
The problem is in the Catechesis, not the method of reception of Jesus's Body and Blood.
>>A lot of the churches built in the last 20 years were not built with this possibility in mind. I know a lot of the churches around my city aren’t built to accommodate kneeling at Communion. They would all have to be retrofitted for this. <<
Not at all.
Our church building was built in 1985. They would not allow us an Altar Rail. Father set up eight kneelers across the front. One person in line kneels down, next person in line kneels down while the first is receiving, the first person stands up and is replaced by another in line.
Four stations of Priests or EMHCs and our Communion moves pretty quickly.
Smells to me like some OCA or Antiochan form of "Orthodoxy." He is most definitely wrong from an Orthodox point of view as he is most probably a Protestant convert.
For instance he states "Given this piety there developed a psychology in the Church that supported the idea that one could actually make himself/herself worthy to approach the chalice and consequently forgot that we can draw near to the Gifts only because Christ has invited us to do so."
Did he not read +Paul's Epistles? It is +Paul who establishes the worthiness when he says that one should not receive unworthily, not the Church in the 4th century!
And, I have been in Orthodox churches all over the world, from Europe to America and Asia (Japan) and they all receive the Holy Communion the same way. The fact that a reader specifically states this is not so in this priest's church should be enough of an alarm bell that things are not altogether Orthodox here.
Just because someone dons an Orthodox cassockl, grows a beard and hangs an Orthodox Cross doesnt' make him Orthodox in the full sense of the word. OCA (Orthodox Church of America) is getting there but so far only Russia recognizes it as a "genuine" Orthodox Church mainly because it wanted it off its back.
If you want genuine Orthodox information don't go to OCA sources. gte it from Greekj, Russian, Serbian and Athonite sources which have kept Orthodoxy straight and narrow throughout centuries and manu tirbulations.
http://www.zenit.org/index.php?l=english
Nothing here and they will be on a two week vacation.
I have the feeling that someone leaked this story. What do you think?
Back when I was Catholic, everyone kneeled along the front rails of the altar. The priest gave the host to everyone on the tongue.
I don't believe they did.
Nor was the last supper held in Latin. I guess by some peoples' standards, we should go all-out and hold Mass in Aramaic?
Since the Council of Trent? Sacred music and reverence of the Eucharist has always been central to the Church. But what counts as "sacred music" has changed from culture to culture. It doesn't have to be Gregorian chant, which didn't even exist until the 6th century. There are all kinds of sacred music. God will accept them all for the genuine worship with which they are expressed.
Someone on this thread answered correctly that Gregory just wrote down the form. Chant of this sort existed long before him. Modern notation in music was developed off of chant. A lot of modern music theory, too. While there are a number of different ways to express reverence in music, this is the sort that inspires one to Heaven - and that is in at least one directive I've seen over the years, as is the canon that all churches are supposed to have an organ as it is the only instrument that is neither male or female in connotation and can fill an entire church with sound. Off the top of my head I can't remember where I saw it as it was while I was researching for a rebuttal for the wreckovation of my home parish some years ago.
As for God accepting all forms - well, I have my doubts and I say this as a classically trained vocalist who sings at the symphonic level. Works of the masters of the late Baroque and Classical periods, IMO, started the serious downward trend from the transcendent sounds of the Renaissance. Some Mass settings and oratorios are downright theatrical in feel. They're fun to do, but they aren't very reverent. They don't lift the soul, exactly. Faure and Bruckner are definite exceptions, but there was a good reason why a lot of that era of music was banned from being done during Mass in the 19th century and the Gregorian retained.
Bring back the rails! :o)
It seems to be coming around on the guitar again, as it were. In cities, most of the congregation at Latin masses tends to be young professionals. In the suburbs, it's about half oldsters, and half young couples with lots of children.
ha, I am sorry. Lay Eucharistic Minister. Probably not everyone abbreviates it...
“Everyone of them can make it to heaven, just like any Catholic, per the Vatican.”
It happens that my salvation, and my being with my Lord and Savior does not depend on any Vatican rulings. My Holy Father is my God and Father in Heaven. His Son is my Lord and my Friend. We communicate.
Romans 10:9 says, “For if thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy heart that God hath raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
My Lord Jesus, the Christ, is the author and finisher of my salvation, and I do not need the blessing of one with a white hat in Rome.
We frequently take communion in our home, we use wine and we use bread, leavened or unleavened. It is the body and blood of our Lord Jesus. It does not become, nor does it represent - it is. Jesus said.
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