Withholding the Eucharist – America Magazine argues that no one should be banned from the Eucharist. No one? Really? What about the unbaptized. Are they free to receive? What about Satanists? The Apologetics of Abuse (Crisis Magazine)
Radicalized Disney lost its magic with average families – “Disney is digging itself into a deeper and deeper hole as it doubles down on its self-proclaimed ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda'” After Disney Doubles Down On Sexualizing Kids, ‘Lightyear’ Falls Way Short At Box Office (The Federalist)
Smell of the Sheep – It is a feature of the current papacy, in stark contrast to the previous, that the incumbent likes to tell people off in his speeches. It’s not really about the lace, of course (One Foot in the Cloister)
Devoted to Democracy – “When it’s time to vote, I go. The thing or person I vote for doesn’t always win, but at least I got to cast my vote.” The Perversities of Polling (The Catholic Things)
Christian Masters – The newest QS Quacquarelli Symonds world university rankings show Cambridge University at second in the world, while Oxford, which was in the silver spot last year, has moved down to fourth. Oxford and the Future of Christian Britain (Association of Mature American Citizens)
Sermon of the Wolf – The title plays on Wulfstan’s own name, but it is also an apt characterization of the angry tone of his urgent message. The Sermon of the Wolf (Amy Welborn)
Christian Liberalism – A revival of Jacques Maritain’s emphasis on Christian participation in society and politics is urgently needed. Where Have You Gone, Jacques Maritain (The Public Discourse)
Drag Queen 101 – How did we reach the point at which drag queens in schools became a topic that is routinely debated in domestic American politics? National Review Is Confused (Compact Magazine)
Fake News – USA Today said it has deleted 23 articles from its website after an investigation found that the reporter who wrote them used fabricated sources. USA Today Reporter Gabriela Miranda Fabricated Sources for 23 articles (NY Post)
Ukraine Is Standing – The enemy is trying to intimidate us. Yesterday, even the missile strikes wounded the western regions of Ukraine—in the Lviv, Ternopil, and Khmelnytsky regions. Videomessaggio di Sua Beatitudine Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Capo e Padre della Chiesa greco-cattolica ucraina nel 112mo giorno di guerra in Ucraina (Il Sismografo)
“Mental-Health Counseling” – Sometimes I think that the world has gone mad, but then I remember that, perhaps, it has always been going mad. Outside the Bubble (Taki’s Magazine)
Joseph’s significance – Many countries with a Catholic heritage, such as Portugal and Spain, honored fathers on March 19: the feast of St. Joseph. Jesus’ earthly dad, St. Joseph – often overlooked – is honored by Father’s Day in many Catholic nations (The Conversation)
A Secular Age – How should contemporary Christians react to the decline of their churches, the secularization of the culture, the final loss of Christendom? A Gentler Christendom (First Things)
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A lot of people, including the pro-aborts and LGBTQXYZ crowd, were denied the Eucharist starting about March 20, 2020 for quite some time as I recall…
I consider America magazine a protestant voice. The Jesuits are held in disrepute by many orthodox Catholics. It’s why they’re getting no vocations.
Would you take a moment to express why a “protestant voice” might not be considered? Either from scripture or church tradition if you’d prefer?
I respect your voice and would value your opinion, if you have time.
God bless you.
Regis Martin, an admirable theologian in Withholding the Eucharist couches his repudiation of America Mag’s open communion recommendation [which already exists in Malta] in a universal understanding of a non discretionary premise.
If I may, the issue goes back to Amoris Laetitia and the idea of the Eucharist as Remedy [whether it’s the ghost writer La Plata Archbishop Tucho Fernandez’ theology it’s embraced by His Holiness] for the sinner. Elsewhere, as I believe Fr A Spadaro SJ Francis’ theological consiglieri put it, “they deny them what they really need”.
It centers on what defines Remedy in context of the penitent. Does he come to the Eucharist absent of either recognition of his sin, and intent to rectify his sinful situation [the Eucharist then received with the assumption that conversion from sin doesn’t require a freely willed desire to reform and works as a form of magic]. Or, does the sinner approach the Eucharist aware, repentant of his sin prepared to receive the Eucharist as a strengthening remedy in combating the evil that afflicts him? The latter is what pontiffs and saints prior to Francis have taught.
The Sacred Heart is a sacred symbol of God’s love revealed in the gift of his real presence in the Eucharist, a love that is neither promiscuous, nor encourages promiscuity or accommodation of evil, evil that is absolutely polar to goodness. A love that requires love freely given rather than not.
You mention that the “open communion recommendation” already exists in Malta. From Malta, Cardinal Grech just happens to be the Secretary General for the ongoing diocesan and national and continental synods, and then the (“aggregated and compiled”–the Vademecum) Synod on Synodality in 2023, or 2024, or whenever.
What the cardinal portrays as a deepening discernment of intact doctrine is just as easily seen as a grey-area nuance too far–a derailment, and in Malta already a fait accompli. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250544/cardinal-grech-2023-synod-on-synodality-is-not-sociological-analysis-of-the-church
Vraiment Pierre. Tout suite un fait accompli.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the Jesuit publication America both refrain from mentioning the view St. Paul expressed in 1 Corinthians 11:27-29.
I do not know biblical citations by chapter and verse from memory, so I used a search engine, searching for “Paul worthy reception”. This remarkable essay was in the first few hits, and has a useful quotation from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
On the Worthy Reception of Holy Communion – Part One
By Msgr. Charles Pope
June 7, 2015
Excerpt:
But many today have reduced Holy Communion to a mere sign of hospitality, such that if the Church does not extend Holy Communion to all, we are considered unkind. There is often a mistaken notion about the nature of the Last Supper (and the Eucharist that proceeds from it) that lurks behind this misconception. Many years ago, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger articulated the misunderstanding well. I summarize the description here from his Collected Works, Vol 11, Ignatius Press pp 273-274:
Nowadays [some] New Testament scholars … say that the Eucharist … is the continuation of the meals with sinners that Jesus had held … a notion with far-reaching consequences. It would mean that the Eucharist is the sinners’ banquet, where Jesus sits at the table; [that] the Eucharist is the public gesture by which we invite everyone without exception. The logic of this is expressed in a far-reaching criticism of the Church’s Eucharist, since it implies that the Eucharist cannot be conditional on anything, not depending on denomination or even on baptism. It is necessarily an open table to which all may come to encounter the universal God …
However tempting the idea may be, it contradicts what we find in the Bible. Jesus’ Last Supper was not one of those meals he held with “publicans and sinners”. He made it subject to the basic form of the Passover, which implies that the meal was held in a family setting. Thus he kept it with his new family, with the Twelve; with those whose feet he washed, whom he had prepared by his Word and by this cleansing of absolution (John 13:10) to receive a blood relationship with him, to become one body with him.
The Eucharist is not itself the sacrament of reconciliation, but in fact it presupposes that sacrament. It is the sacrament of the reconciled, to which the Lord invites all those who have become one with him; who certainly still remain weak sinners, but yet have given their hand to him and have become part of his family.
That is why, from the beginning, the Eucharist has been preceded by a discernment … (I Corinthians 11:27 ff). The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles [the Didache] is one of the oldest writings outside the New Testament, from the beginning of the Second Century, it takes up this apostolic tradition and has the priest, just before distributing the sacrament saying:”Whoever is holy, let him approach, whoever is not, let him do penance” (Didache 10).
Last sentence from Buzz Lightyear article: “If Disney continues down this anti-family path, it can expect to see its place in the American household fizzle as inauspiciously as this last installation of the “Toy Story’ franchise.” I’d love to see Disney fade, but ay caramba. Can’t the Federalist afford some editors who help young writers temper their prose.
I subscribe to First Things, and I’ll get around to reading the article, but what really irritates me is why no one seems to be bold enough to tackle, head on, the secularization of the Church itself. Much is written about theological corruption in individual cases, but not enough is written about the pervasive evilness by willful, self-conscious clerics intent on its deconstruction. A collapsing ecclesial culture gets left to “rad-trads” who are seemingly subject to universal insult and dismissal.
In an article on feeding the hunger in our souls, CNA, brought to our attention Pope Francis’ beautiful reflection on the meaning of communion.
“We can evaluate our Eucharistic Adoration when we take care of our neighbor like Jesus does,” the pope said Sunday before the recitation of the Angelus at St. Peter’s Square in Rome.
“There is hunger for food around us, but also for companionship; there is hunger for consolation, friendship, good humor; there is hunger for attention, there is hunger to be evangelized. We find this in the Eucharistic Bread — the attention of Christ to our needs and the invitation to do the same toward those who are beside us. We need to eat and feed others.”
Yes, communion is about receiving our Lord and then sharing him, his message and love with others. This would include lost souls. Otherwise, the ritual of receiving communion would be a meaningless one.