Still talking about “eucharistic coherence” – that is, the questions the American bishops will supposedly be grappling with, a question focused on abortion-promoting Catholic president Biden, but with broader implications.
My themes are history and transparency, right? Take a good look of the history of the reception of Communion and talk about it forthrightly.
A series of previous posts from early in the summer are linked below. Yesterday, I gave you a couple of more authoritative links – and let’s add Mediator Dei to that, and wrote a bit about the Church’s historical presumption that a spiritually engaged Catholic will, indeed, seek to receive Communion regularly and as frequently as possible.
The assumption being, of course, that “spiritually engaged” means deeply intentional, properly disposed, and in communion with the Body of Christ in belief and practice.
Not “I was baptized so it’s my right to receive Communion no matter what. Gimme.”
Today I want to detour just a bit and revisit history of the laity and Communion from another angle.
For the fact is, that through much of Catholic history, despite the exhortations of the spiritual masters and saints, laity were not expected to receive the Eucharist more than a couple of times a year. Even in areas where Mass was regularly available, the practices evolved that did, indeed, discourage or even prevent the laity from receiving: it was simply not distributed to the laity during Mass, or it was distributed afterwards, or sometimes even before – as I noted in this post about a classic sociological study of an early 20th century Quebecois community, St. Denis – I made a pdf of the chapters on the Mass, which some of you might find interesting. I know I always appreciate reading more objective descriptions of Catholic practice from outside observers.
So yes, there seemed to be a great distance between the spiritual assertions of the early Church fathers about the importance of receiving Communion as a part of the Eucharistic celebration and the practices that evolved over the centuries.
Hence, the emphasis of the liturgical movement on this very matter. Outside of the scholarly arena, the goals of the popular, lay-oriented liturgical movement of the 20th century were all about engaging the laity more deeply with liturgical action and encouraging the laity to receive Communion.
But again – this did not take the form of simply declaring, “All are welcome! Forget your neurosis and scrupulosity! Just come on up!”
Not at all.
As I’ve discussed here and in other place, the focus of this lay-centered corner of the 20th century Liturgical Movement was all about, first, education, and then, encouraging the laity to receive Communion more often – as the result of a deeper prayer life and more frequent Confession. Which then, it was hoped, would result in a more engaged, grace-filled laity that would, in turn, be more effective in bringing Christ into the world.
The difference between that and the current push to throw off purported “barriers” between the laity and Communion is profound, I think, is about more than “just” the Eucharist.
Here’s what everyone agrees:
The person who approaches the altar to receive the Eucharist should be “properly disposed” and “worthy.” This is deeply rooted in Scripture and Church practice. It just is.
The question is – what does it mean to be properly disposed and worthy? I unpacked that here, and I encourage you to read it.
Pulling together the historically-oriented discussions I’ve tried to have here, I’ll shorthand it this way:
It seems to me that the tension results in part from assuming that the best thing is to institutionalize the practices of the intentional Christian community of Acts in a modern Church whose practices, expectations and membership reflects 1500 years of unintentional Christian community.
Here’s another example:
In the 1960’s, Catholic authorities decided that the mandatory, year-round Friday abstinence obligation was a relic of a legalistic medieval past and not only could, but should be dispensed with. As I’ve noted before, though – to give them credit – they didn’t just ditch it. In most documents announcing and contextualizing this massive change, these same Church authorities wrote of the continued importance of observing Friday – the day of the Lord’s Passion and death – in a way that involved sacrifice. Done now, however, freely and intentionally, as intentional Christian disciples would, of course, do.
So what happened? What did we do?
We …ditched it and forgot about it.
A commentor on one of my blogs once offered a remembrance of how his parents and the friends in their Catholic neighborhood responded to the elimination of meatless Fridays – by throwing a huge steak cookout party, of course!
And so we enter into that fraught, difficult area of obligation and the freedom of the Christian, worked out in various ways over the centuries, always an matter of tension, both in terms of group practice and identity and, as we all know, our individual spiritual lives.
But the point is this: when you read the documents of the Second Vatican Council, you encounter, among other things, heady idealism about the world and human nature and trust that of course we are all going to be conducting our faith lives at the highest level.
Which, as I’ve written about before, is natural for such documents, but also, well, unrealistic. It’s long seemed to me that the genius of organically developing Catholic practice is that it takes into account human weakness and laziness. So for example, the much-maligned strict rubrics that a priest celebrating Mass in earlier eras were bound by, under pain of sin, even mortal sin. How restrictive! How retrograde! Let the Spirit flow!
Well, you don’t have to be a priest to understand the impact of habit and repetitiveness on any practice, especially religious practice. As we move through our lives, we lose our enthusiasm, we are beset by doubts, we go through dark nights, we get bored and what was at first a marvelous, miraculous gift of an experience evolves into a bothersome routine, and we just want to get it over with.
And you can well imagine, this can happen to a priest celebrating the Mass.
He may be experiencing all of that – but does he have the right to bring the congregation into it? Don’t the women, men and children gathering for Mass, bringing their own hopes and joys, have the right to a proper, elevated experience of worship, no matter what’s going on in the celebrant’s head?
Yes they do.
Hence the rubrics. Hence the sinfulness of violating them: it’s uncharitable, in the deepest sense, to deprive others of a full experience of worship just because you’re bored with it.
Which is a bit of a detour, isn’t it? The point, I suppose, was that in that tension between obligation and freedom, both play a part in our spiritual lives simply because we are not angels. And sound Church practice recognizes that, without condemning us either.
So, back we are to the reception of Communion.
I spent some time a couple of weeks ago reading two of the most iconic post-Vatican II popular catechetical works: the Dutch New Catechism and Christ Among Us, the latter being one of most commonly-found American catechisms both for adults and teens – it was our foundational catechism in high school (1978-82).
You can read them both via the Internet Archive.
I was particularly interested in their treatment of this issue, and what I found was, of course, the idealism of the Conciliar years: noting that yes, to approach Christ in the Sacrament called for one to be ready and worthy, but also characterizing that disposition in the most general way, coupled with the expectation that if one went to Mass, one should receive – that the active participation which a Catholic is called to involves receiving Communion.
Circling back – the assumption that the Early Church ideal was applicable to the present day. In a way, of course, that ignores context – the early Church’s exclusion of public sinners from even attendance at the Eucharistic celebration – and the impact of 1500 years of history.
This has been long and typically convoluted, and guess what, I’m not even done yet. This is why I work these notions out in this space – I can meander, and then later gather everything together in a more cohesive way. So thanks for putting up with it, at any rate.
So what’s the point?
So far it’s been:
The present day encouragement for all to receive Communion, simply because they are Catholic, desire to receive, and judge, themselves, that they should and can based on that desire is not consistent with Catholic practice from any point in its history.
Throughout that history, when Catholics have been encouraged to revisit their practices and receive the Eucharist more frequently and regularly, it has never been in the context of a concern that individuals not feel excluded from the table or feel like “sinners.” It has always been exhorted in the context of a call for individuals to deepen their spiritual lives, turn away from sin and conform themselves more closely to Christ.
The call to receive the Eucharist more frequently, even at every Mass, has been presented with the hopeful trust that all Catholics could be as intentional and Spirit-filled as those early Christians sharing the bread and cup in Jerusalem – not that they already are.
Eucharistic Coherence 1: On being honest about Catholic tradition and practice
Eucharistic Coherence 2: On “reward for saints” v. “bread for sinners”
Eucharistic Coherence 3: On what it means to say one is “unworthy?”
Eucharistic Coherence 4: On what comes after, “O Lord, I am not worthy…”
If you haven’t read Holy Feast Holy Fast about a few women from the Middle Ages you might find it instructive.
You mention priests having to say Mass even when they are not invested. The modern rules for laity are meant to encourage reception of Communion when when you don’t feel worthy, thus the medicinal effects of receiving Christ. The belief is that those in sin will find the grace to seek confession and mend their ways.
Among the liberal commentators I follow, I believe it is strongly held that, say, Biden’s support of abortion is no different than another Catholics support of an unconscionable war or other immoral processes. They hold her is not in a state of mortal sin, but just a sinner like the rest of us and this discussion is politics masked as faith.
Granting that mortal sinners should not receive, I think they would argue that, effectively, the only mortal sinners are the ones in the confession line ready to atone for what they have done. The rest are no different than you or I.
RIght – and in my unending series on this, I have that planned to address – I agree with you!