TOP 10 REASONS TO CURTAIL THE USEOF EXTRAORDINARY MINISTERS AT MASS

10. BLUE HAIR

Strange, unnatural tints provide visual distractions that are not conducive to prayer.

9. IT’S HARDER TO STEAL A HOST FROM A PRIEST

Satanic cults need Consecrated Hosts to perform their perverse rituals.

8. LEE'S "PRESS-ON NAILS" TASTE TERRIBLE

Trust me--they do.

7. TOO MANY EMHC's DON’T KNOW THE PROPER WAY TO DISTRIBUTE HOLY COMMUNION ACCORDING TO THE WORLDWIDE NORM

And make no mistake, the worldwide norm is on the tongue. See more about that here.

6. IT IS MORE ECUMENICAL TO RESTRICT DISTRIBUTION TO PRIESTS

Face it—the one group we are most likely to achieve any “re-unity” with first is the Orthodox Churches. They frown on laypeople distributing Holy Communion (or, for that matter, anyone receiving in the hand).

5. SELF-INTINCTION IS FORBIDDEN

However, without a priest to stop it, people like the young man pictured are more likely to try to pull it off.
(Note how casually the EMHC holds the Sacred Chalice with one hand).

4. MORE EXTRAORDINARY MINISTERS WOULD BE AVAILABLE TO ASSIST THE SICK

Have you ever noticed how in some parishes there are 30 people rising up from the congregation to help distribute Holy Communion, but trying to get one to come to your home or hospital room is like trying to pass an act of congress? We don’t need so many at Mass, so let’s send them where they’re needed.

3. RESTRICTING DISTRIBUTION OF HOLY COMMUNION TO PRIESTS SHOWS GREATER REVERENCE AND RESPECT FOR THE OFFICE OF THE ORDAINED PRIESTHOOD

How many times have you heard some gossip complaining that “so-and-so has no business being a ‘eucharistic minister’, after all, we all know that she…” The life of a Catholic priest is consecrated and set apart. Let’s show it some more respect.

2. LAY PEOPLE DO NOT NEED TO RECEIVE HOLY COMMUNION UNDER BOTH SPECIES

The Body and Blood of Christ are BOTH present in the Host. Baltimore Catechism #3, Question 883:

Hi Kolokotronis,

from the Vatican’s documents (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20040423_redemptionis-sacramentum_en.html)

Chapter VII says:

EXTRAORDINARY FUNCTIONS
OF LAY FAITHFUL

[146.] There can be no substitute whatsoever for the ministerial Priesthood. For if a Priest is lacking in the community, then the community lacks the exercise and sacramental function of Christ the Head and Shepherd, which belongs to the essence of its very life.[247] For “the only minister who can confect the sacrament of the Eucharist in persona Christi is a validly ordained Priest”.[248]

[147.] When the Church’s needs require it, however, if sacred ministers are lacking, lay members of Christ’s faithful may supply for certain liturgical offices according to the norm of law.[249] Such faithful are called and appointed to carry out certain functions, whether of greater or lesser weight, sustained by the Lord’s grace. Many of the lay Christian faithful have already contributed eagerly to this service and still do so, especially in missionary areas where the Church is still of small dimensions or is experiencing conditions of persecution,[250] but also in areas affected by a shortage of Priests and Deacons.

[148.] Particular importance is to be attached to the training of catechists, who by means of great labours have given and still give outstanding and altogether necessary help in the spreading of the faith and of the Church.[251]

[149.] More recently, in some dioceses long since evangelized, members of Christ’s lay faithful have been appointed as “pastoral assistants”, and among them many have undoubtedly served the good of the Church by providing assistance to the Bishop, Priests and Deacons in the carrying out of their pastoral activity. Let care be taken, however, lest the delineation of this function be assimilated too closely to the form of pastoral ministry that belongs to clerics. That is to say, attention should be paid to ensuring that “pastoral assistants” do not take upon themselves what is proper to the ministry of the sacred ministers.

[150.] The activity of a pastoral assistant should be directed to facilitating the ministry of Priests and Deacons, to ensuring that vocations to the Priesthood and Diaconate are awakened and that lay members of Christ’s faithful in each community are carefully trained for the various liturgical functions, in keeping with the variety of charisms and in accordance with the norm of law.

[151.] Only out of true necessity is there to be recourse to the assistance of extraordinary ministers in the celebration of the Liturgy. Such recourse is not intended for the sake of a fuller participation of the laity but rather, by its very nature, is supplementary and provisional.[252] Furthermore, when recourse is had out of necessity to the functions of extraordinary ministers, special urgent prayers of intercession should be multiplied that the Lord may soon send a Priest for the service of the community and raise up an abundance of vocations to sacred Orders.[253]

[152.] These purely supplementary functions must not be an occasion for disfiguring the very ministry of Priests, in such a way that the latter neglect the celebration of Holy Mass for the people for whom they are responsible, or their personal care of the sick, or the baptism of children, or assistance at weddings or the celebration of Christian funerals, matters which pertain in the first place to Priests assisted by Deacons. It must therefore never be the case that in parishes Priests alternate indiscriminately in shifts of pastoral service with Deacons or laypersons, thus confusing what is specific to each.

[153.] Furthermore, it is never licit for laypersons to assume the role or the vesture of a Priest or a Deacon or other clothing similar to such vesture.

I have myself been greatly torn, when witnessing abuses, no doubt unintended, by Extraordinary Eucharistic ministers. I am admittedly one of those who would prefer a return of the Minor Orders, perhaps, in lieu of the folks of whom we are speaking. I do not wish to vilify them. I just find myself thinking that, in many places, I see them in use when not truly needed.

By the way, the “Protestant” words which Sing a New Church Into Being replaces are:

1. Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

2. Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

3. Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

4. O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

5. O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

You prefer the Catholic version?

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