Adding to the confusion.
So who can receive communion in the Catholic Church?
According to Cardinal Kasper, non-Catholics such as the late Br. Roger of Taize.
Cardinal Walter Kasper attempts to explain how someone can be both Protestant and Catholic. Sandro Magister observes: “According to Kasper, it is as if there had been an unwritten agreement between Schutz and the Church of Rome, ‘crossing certain confessional’ and canonical limits.” - Source (Obviously many dissidents feel the same way about their differences with the Church.)
No communion for you!
Once upon a time I knew a very devout Lutheran lady who wanted to be Catholic so badly, but she couldn’t because her family would object - seeing her son-in-law was a Lutheran minister. The good lady spent hours in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, devoted herself to works of charity, and for awhile, a liberal priest permitted her to communicate daily, until a devout nun reminded the priest it was a source of scandal to other protestants who were denied communion, and was also against Church regulations. The poor woman was distraut, yet politely refrained from approaching the sacrament.
So back to the communions of Br. Roger of Taize.
How do you explain that to many protestants who are not permitted to receive Holy Communion - even though they believe in the Real Presence, as well as dissenting politicians? How do we evangelize and catechize when such double standards are publicly flaunted? It is like the gay issue, the rules say, “No homosexuals permitted to ordination” yet they are there - perhaps permitted entrance because of pastoral considerations. All I am asking, do we follow Church teaching or what?
I’m only a simple man, so I find myself repeating the following prayer incessantly these days:
“O my God! I firmly believe that Thou art one God in three Divine persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; I believe that Thy Divine Son became man, and died for our sins, and that he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church teaches, because Thou hast revealed them, who canst neither deceive nor be deceived.”
Links:
August 25th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
It’s a mess. Would I have converted if I met the Church of the present day and not the Church of the history books? Maybe not. No, no I would have because in spite of the mess I have to echo Peter, “Lord, to whom else shall we go?…” But yeah, it’s a mess.
August 25th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Brother Roger received Communion from Pope Benedict himself at JP II’s funeral.
The whole abortion-Communion issue doesn’t exist in Europe. Again, the pope gives Communion to all kinds of politicians who could outlaw abortion, since it’s based on simple law. It’s the absurdity of Roe v Wade that creates the situation in the USA. In Western Europe, abortion is usually legal (or not punished) in the first trimester. Abortion rates are also far lower, esp. among teens.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Terry:
I don’t think the reason you find “gay” Seminarians is because of “pastoral” considerations. It’s more profound than that; allow me to wax lyrical.
To talk of ‘gay’ Priests or Seminarians turns the discussion over to intense intrusion into people’s private lives on the mere assumption that they are ‘acting out’ any attractions or inclinations they may have. And that is the point I’d like to make. The language of the Vatican instruction is quite sublte in this way.
Young Same Sex Attracted (SSA) men do not need the hurt and pain of trying to “pray away the gay”, as a friend recently put it. They do not need to view their questions about possible loneliness/solitude in the clerical state as being any being worth anything less than the next man’s. It is damaging, painful, and due to mankind’s fall from grace, is counterproductive. It will not lead anywhere. The challenge of a chaste Priesthood is the same whether has fleeting attractions to men or women. If one acts on it, well that is a whole other matter, and one which quite rightly demands defrocking.
For this reason the instruction talks about homosexuality (i.e. acts). There is a clear, and very Catholic distinction, between one’s attractions and one’s behaviour, between love and the sexual or genital act. To identify oneself by one’s sexual attractions is putting Christ in the backseat, always a sure path to perdition.
SSA men do not need the extra burden of branding themselves fundamentally disordered [whilst the Church may call homosexual acts "disordered", she does not call them disordered (by the way, we must also ask what "disordered" really means]. Instead, they must recognise that the call to purity and continence is of equal burden to them regardless of how falls from it may have manifested themselves in the past.
The recent Vatican instruction makes it clear that someone still troubled by the acting out of Same Sex Attractions is unfit for ordination. So, too, would someone who is conducting an active heterosexual lifestyle. Equally, it states that one who supports the so-called “gay lifestyle” is also unfit (because it is as much a a con as go-go dancers in a nightclub, or any lifestyle devoid of God).
August 26th, 2008 at 3:58 am
To tell the truth I am more troubled by Catholics who don’t believe in the Real Presence than by non-Catholics such as Br. Roger and your Lutheran friend who do believe in it.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:00 am
I agree TOTALLY with Owen!We dont have anywhere else to go!
August 26th, 2008 at 9:43 am
It is true as Owen and Belinda said. We do indeed have nowhere else to go but I would go further and add that I would not want to go anywhere else either.
I may not agree with everything that goes on in the Church of today nor what went on in the past, but I love Her just the same, and would never leave Her. Where else will I find the Real Presence?
In this I feel a bit like Ruth to the Church’s Naomi if you will. . .
August 26th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Thanks everyone for all the good comments.
Mark - I was actually being sarcastic using the “pastoral” word - “pastoral” seems to cover a multitude of sins. But I appreciate your serious and insightful comments.
I still have to wonder why directives and instructions from the Vatican are even given since they seem to be generally ignored or reinterpreted to suit just about anyone.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Probably for the same reason that the Lord spent three years preaching, even though many rejected him, reinterpreted him or misunderstood him.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Clayton - Thanks so much - that didn’t even occur to me. That is very consoling.
August 26th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Kirk - I feel exactly the same way.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I know what you mean Terry; I was trying to give a realistic explanation for what should be (per my thesis) a non-worrying phenomenon. Sorry for going overboard…
regarding instruction from the Vatican, yeah they are often misinterpreted, but I think they are issued because, sometime, somewhere, there is someone who might just understand them right actually do the right thing on the basis of them!
August 26th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Just try ,and tear me away.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:56 am
By the way, Gerald, the abortion-Communion does exist in Europe. It’s just not well noticed.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Dear Mr. Leo, I have read that the second most popular baby name in England is Mohammad.
(Leo ,trouble is a brew’n.)
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23428641-details/ Mohammed+now+second+most+popular+boys‘+name+in+Britain/artic le.do
How will these amazing women with the awesome careers out run the Turks in their Italian leather heels, and pencil skirts?