Accidents and the holy eucharist

Sometimes they happen. It’s a fallen world.

Melancholicus has read of instances of hosts being found, unaccountably, on the floors of churches, between the pages of missalettes, under pews, or even—what sacrilege—in the trash.

These last, especially if the sacred host winds up in the trash, cannot reasonably be described as accidental.

Melancholicus remembers seeing a parish priest doling out holy communion at Sunday Mass, and not even noticing that a host had slipped to the floor at his feet. Fortunately, a young woman waiting in line had noticed, and picked the host up and returned it to him. He replaced it in the ciborium and went on doling out communion. None of the traditional rites of purification prescribed in the case of a host that falls was followed in this instance, but to be fair, these rites are no longer mandated by liturgical law.

It is really quite amazing. No wonder so many Catholics regard the Blessed Sacrament as no more than a wafer, when they see it treated with such casual regard even by their priests.

Back in his pew after communion, Melancholicus tarried in the church when Mass had ended, as is his wont, offering his private prayers up to the Lord. He loves the silence of the church after Mass when the last members of the congregation have departed. Sometimes he shares the quiet of the church in these moments with the cleaning lady, who potters about the sanctuary and dusts the statues and shrines when the lights have been switched off. This particular Sunday, the cleaning lady was moving about the pews with a brush, sweeping the floor. Melancholicus was reciting his office.

The sweeping drew nearer and nearer, until the cleaning lady was practically only a pew in front of Melancholicus, whereat he noticed her bending down and retrieving an object from the church floor. It was round, white, flat and about the breadth of a €2 coin.

It was, of course, a sacred host.

We looked at one another in startled amazement. She did the only thing she could do; she received as reverently as she could, under the circumstances. Melancholicus was upset, this being his first encounter in the real world with the Blessed Sacrament thus carelessly discarded. He closed his breviary and made some prayers of reparation, but was so filled with distress and repugnance that he could not stay in the church but rose almost at once to leave. In the church porch he addressed the cleaning lady.

“Do you often find hosts on the floor of the church?”

“Every now and then,” was her reply. “Sometimes it’s children, and of course it’s because of communion in the hand, but you really don’t know what some people are up to.”

She really hit the nail on the head. The shoddy catechesis which prevails in our schools has ensured that Catholic children grow up without the slightest knowledge of what the eucharist really is. Dare we be surprised if such children then discard the host in the strange places it has turned up ever since the whole liturgical reform debacle was first imposed?

But the most nefarious culprit in these desecrations is the abominable practice of communion in the hand, which continues to be permitted in practically every diocese, despite the accumulating mountain of evidence that it has greatly facilitated countless sacrileges as well as an incomparable loss of faith among churchgoing Catholics.

Consider this a plea, gentle reader, for the restoration of the traditional method of receiving holy communion, with the reverence and decorum attached thereto. If you are a Catholic, and are not already doing so, please consider refraining from receiving the host in your hand. Please insist only on receiving on the tongue, even when this is difficult, or an occasion of inconvenience. Please insist on receiving only from the hands of a priest; leave the so-called ‘extraordinary ministers’ well alone. If you are yourself an ‘extraordinary minister’, please desist from being so immediately, no matter how fulfilled, spiritual or useful your function may make you feel. Please take care to educate your children properly on the truth about the blessed eucharist; don’t leave it to their school—their school won’t deliver. Please offer up whatever difficulties and inconveniences you may experience as a result of putting these recommendations into practice in reparation for outrages and sacrileges committed against the most holy sacrament of the altar. If more and more people insist on the traditional method of communicating, their example will influence others, and little by little the execrable practice of communion in the hand will die out.

As communion in the hand dies out, sacrileges against the blessed eucharist will become less frequent, for the two are inextricably connected.

Priests fear sacramental wine could tip them over the driving limit

This is a story which properly belongs to the silly season, yet all the Irish media outlets seem to be taking it up. The version of the story presented on the website of Newstalk 106 (complete with spelling errors) is the most contemptible of all, but this coverage by Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times is not much better, at least from the perspective of Catholic theological acumen:

Priests fear altar wine may tip them over driving limit

Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Concerns have been expressed that priests celebrating more than one Mass in a day could soon find themselves over the legal limit for drink driving.

Enniskillen-based Fr Brian D'Arcy said the issue was already a concern among some priests in the North, which, like the Republic, is actively considering a reduction in the blood alcohol limit for drivers.

"The shortage of priests has resulted in those who are currently ministering having to say multiple Masses, and often drive from church to church to do so, having drunk from the chalice in each church," he said.

"Perhaps it [celebrating a number of Masses] could be enough for you to fail a drink driving test, and while I don't like to use the word wine, as it is the precious blood in the Eucharist, it still has all the characteristics of wine when in the blood stream," said Fr D'Arcy.

He pointed out that the use of non-alcoholic wine was not an option, as it was not allowed by the Vatican, even where alcoholic priests were concerned.

Fr D'Arcy said he always felt bad himself when getting into a car after celebrating a number of Masses. "As a pioneer myself I am conscious of the danger now that there is zero tolerance here in Northern Ireland of alcohol for people who are driving, and I assume the zero rule is due soon in the South as well," he said.

"Perhaps a small amount would not show up in blood tests but only medically qualified people can decide that. After doing several Masses I often have to drive off immediately to visit some person who may be very ill in hospital," said Fr D'Arcy.

Both the Republic and the North currently have the same blood alcohol limit for drivers of 80mg/100ml, but a reduction in the limit on both sides of the Border is expected within 18 months.

Fr D'Arcy was responding to a Tuam Herald report which quoted a north Galway priest as saying that, while he often had three ministers of the Eucharist at some Masses, he sometimes had to finish the wine left over in their chalices as well as his own.

This, he felt, could put him over the legal limit for driving.

"I would often have to read an evening Mass in the church as well as another one in a nearby nursing home and then drive to celebrate a neighbourhood Mass, all in one evening," he said.

"If I only took a mouthful of wine from the chalice at all three Masses I feel that this could put me over the legal limit for driving. But if a call comes in that somebody is nearing death, I have no choice but drive to where that person is and give him or her the last rites," he said.

© 2007 The Irish Times

Brian D’Arcy, for all his dissent from the teachings of the Catholic Church, actually presents us here with the authentic Catholic teaching on the eucharist; credit where credit is due.

The use of non-alcoholic wine is not permitted in the celebration of Mass since it would not constitute valid matter, and the sacrament would not therefore be confected.

Melancholicus wonders who this “north Galway priest” is, who apparently engages routinely in the doubtful and definitely-to-be-discouraged practice of offering holy communion to the laity under both kinds. What kind of priest entrusts an ‘extraordinary’ minister with the chalice anyway? But then, in these conciliar times...

If this priest is worried about his blood alcohol level, let him abolish this novel and un-traditional practice in his parish instead of complaining to the press about it.

Melancholicus was vexed most of all by the content of text messages sent to Newstalk 106, which he heard read over the radio while driving to the university. Without exception they displayed a total lack of comprehension of the Catholic doctrine of the eucharist and the Mass. One correspondent stated openly that she did not believe in orthodox eucharistic doctrine even though it is a central tenet of what she called “our faith”, and even seemed to believe that, since the clergy were worried about being intoxicated by the Precious Blood, this implied that the clergy did not believe in it either! Her logic is hardly any stronger than her faith. None of the correspondents seemed to know anything about transubstantiation; all, without exception, referred to the Precious Blood, post-consecration, as “wine”.

But we must not be surprised at such a state of affairs. Such has been the abysmal state of catechetics in Catholic schools since the 1970s, as well as the almost ubiqitous reluctance of the clergy to actually teach the Catholic faith that nobody, not even Catholics, knows what the Catholic faith is any more.