CARDINAL DEW, THE BISHOPS AND THE CONGREGATION RUNNING INTO A HEAD-ON

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There's more than one likely motive for Cardinal John Dew's intransigence in continuing to deny the faithful their right to Holy Communion on the tongue. His Archdiocese of Wellington has received $428,628 in subsidies from a Government which 'advises' the Archdiocese that Communion on the tongue should not be allowed. And Cardinal Dew complies. That's one.

In taking the handout the cardinal puts the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of this archdiocese morally in hock to a Government which three months ago smuggled in the most evil abortion legislation in the world, concealed in the Trojan horse of  Lockdown, on the pretext of COVID-19.

If that were not enough, the Cardinal errs in obeying an unjust, immoral law. Pope John XXIII stressed the role of conscience: “The world’s Creator has stamped [our] inmost being with an order revealed to [us] by conscience.” 

The pope went on to declare that conscience could not be coerced either in religious matters or the relationship of the person to the state: “A regime which governs solely or mainly by means of threats and intimidation or promises of rewardprovides no effective incentive to work for the common good . . . Since all [people] are equal in natural dignity, no [one] has the capacity to force internal compliance on another. Only God can do that, for [God] alone scrutinizes and judges the secret counsels of the heart. Hence representatives of the state have no power to bind men in conscience, unless their own authority is tied to God’s authority, and is a participation in it.”

The Pope's point is that laws which violate the moral order have no legitimacy and do not merit obedience: “Governmental authority . . . derives from God. Consequently, laws and decrees passed in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience, since ‘it is right to obey God rather than men.’

A law forbidding freedom of religion, of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, reception of the Sacraments, and even admission to God's house manifestly contravenes the moral order and the divine will and has no binding force in conscience. Only  prelates with a predilection for placating (sorry about the alliteration, sometimes I can't help myself), like Cardinal Dew who didn't get to where he is today by stirring, could possibly go along with such a travesty of justice. 

Another motive for denying Holy Communion on the tongue is more obvious, but we'd rather think Cardinal Dew and any other bishops still persisting in this persecution of faithful Catholics are venally motivated, by the Government pay-off, than by perhaps collaborating with Pope Francis in a back-door route to ousting the Traditional Latin Mass. 

Latin Mass parishes overseas are drawing children and young people

The Pope has called for the world's bishops' 'advice' on the TLM.  But traditionalist Catholics fear that Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) Prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria's letter of March 7 could be the beginning of a process which puts the Vetus Ordo Missae "under threat."

"I can only interpret this as the CDF looking for trouble. As the old saying goes, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' It looks like they're trying to break it, so then they can 'fix' it," a Rome-based canon lawyer told Church Militant. 

"Doesn't the CDF have anything else to do? For years and years they have been up to their eyeballs in graviora delicta [serious offense] cases. Since Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela was issued in 2001, bishops are now required to contact the CDF when they receive accusations of clerical sex abuse," the canonist said.   
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/pope-francis-targets-latin-mass

Whatever their motivation, NZ's bishops should be reminded of this communication from Cardinal Jorge Estevez, Prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to US bishops, circa 2002: 

"While this Congregation gave the recognitio to the norm desired by the Bishops’ Conference of your country that people stand for Holy Communion, this was done on the condition that communicants who choose to kneel (and receive on the tongue) are not to be denied Holy Communion on these grounds. Indeed, the faithful should not be imposed upon nor accused of disobedience and of acting illicitly when they kneel to receive Holy Communion …

“Priests should understand that the Congregation will regard future complaints of this nature with great seriousness, and if they are verified, it intends to seek disciplinary action consonant with the gravity of the pastoral abuse” – Cardinal Jorge Estevez, Prefect (2002).

Dear Cardinal Dew and Bishops, don't say you haven't been warned. The NZCBC might regard disciplinary action by the Congregation as a slap over the wrist with a wet bus ticket, but their faithful flock would not. 

During the great Arian crisis of the fourth century, eighty percent of the Church's bishops fell into the heresy of Arianism. It was the laity, not the hierarchy, who kept the Faith and were used by God to save the Church. It could happen again.

But even in the natural order there's no justification for denying Communion on the tongue, which Cardinal Dew continues to do, quoting the 'need for safety', even though anecdotally it seems his brother bishops and priests are at sixes and sevens over whether to allow the norm for receiving Communion in the Church for 2000 years.  

And if anyone still needs convincing that a mode of reception which entails no touching and where the priest's and communicant's faces are at different levels, is less 'sanitary' than touching a succession of hands, face-to face, then listen to 21 Austrian doctors who have called on their Bishops’ Conference to lift the de facto ban on receiving Holy Communion on the tongue.

"Bishops’ conferences such as Italy's and Austria's, like New Zealand's, have obliged priests to distribute Communion only in the hand.  

For traditionally-minded Catholics, this is the equivalent of a full ban on receiving Communion. The lack of respect and risk of profanation of particles from the consecrated Host in Communion in the hand is unacceptable to them.

The 21 Catholic Austrian doctors of Austria quoted the professional opinion of Professor Filippo Maria Boscia, the president of the Association of Catholic Doctors of Italy, who stated in May that “Communion on the tongue is safer than hand Communion.”

In the Tridentine Rite, measures to prevent spreading the coronavirus are more evident than in the Novus Ordo, as in the Latin Mass the priest is required to hold thumb and forefinger together from the Consecration, using them only to touch the Host until the moment when he once again purifies his hands.

The doctors commented that “the priests who celebrate in the traditional rite are experienced in administering oral communion and practically never have contact with the mouth of the communicant. Should this happen, however, a priest can be credited with such a sense of responsibility that, taking into account the present situation, he will interrupt the giving of communion and clean his hands.

"They also noted that when the faithful kneel to receive Communion, contamination by droplets is less likely because the priest’s face is not at the same level as that of the communicant.

“From the point of view of hygiene, it is absolutely incomprehensible to us why oral communion has been banned in Austria (or in New Zealand or anywhere else). We also consider this form of distribution safer than hand communion,” the doctors wrote. They also underscored that most contaminations are the result of sullied hands, quoting Dr. Boscia, who wrote in May: “What is certain is that the hands are the parts of the body that are most exposed to pathogens.”

"The Catholic Doctors of Austria concluded their letter by recalling that the Congregation for Divine Worship proclaimed the faithful’s “right” to receive Communion on the tongue, with no exceptions."https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/21-doctors-tell-bishops-communion-on-tongue-safer-than-in-hand?fbclid=IwAR0accU40WGXFMlRKQ74XHZn1i5fuDsEB9FmBIK5dZiz6vKXUwf1asWLzQk

I rest their case. And mine.

But to get back to the deal between the Prince of the Church and the Powers of Darkness:


"The (subsidy) scheme is open to all businesses (including the self-employed, contractors and sole traders), registered charities, incorporated societies and post-settlement governance entities, that are adversely affected by Covid-19. Businesses are eligible for the subsidy where they have experienced a 30 per cent decline in actual or predicted revenue related to Covid-19. Before receiving a subsidy, they must take active steps to manage the implications of Covid-19 on their businesses."

https://nzcatholic.org.nz/2020/05/11/several-nz-dioceses-join-wage-subsidy-scheme/

Catholics come cheap! 

You can bet your bottom dollar that the 'active steps to manage the implication of Covid-19' in the Catholic Church in New Zealand didn't include the measures so sorely needed to repopulate our churches and increase their revenue. In fact we know they didn't, because those measures, according to Catholic Tradition and even plain old common sense, would be: 

• preaching on the supreme importance of Holy Mass and devotion to the Eucharist
• promotion of frequency of reception of the Sacrament of Confession
• immediate reinstatement of reception of Communion kneeling, and on the tongue
• promotion of the Novus Ordo ad orientem - all facing God on the altar instead of versus populum (priest facing the people)
• promotion of fasting and prayer for the intention of holy priests
• promotion of study of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Church, for priests as well as people
• an explicit expectation that all children attending a parish school be baptised and attend Sunday Mass with their parents, who should also contribute to the maintenance of the church which is the reason for the school's existence. 

One can imagine that had Cardinal Dew presented the foregoing to the Government as 'active steps to manage the implications of Covid-19' on the 'business' of the Church, it would have gone down like a cup of cold sick. No, what the Government wanted from the Archdiocese of Wellington and Cardinal Dew, in exchange for its thirty pieces of silver, was compliance and more bureaucracy, and the Government got it.

Is it not already horribly apparent what a blight has settled on our Catholic schools since they became state-integrated in the '70s? At the time, the Church rejoiced at the Labour Government's response to their parlous state financially of near-collapse. It was goodbye to garden parties, concerts and raffles. Unfortunately, with hindsight orthodox Catholics see that it was hello to dancing with the devil.

It's the old story: 'He who pays the piper calls the tune'. Catholic schools are subject now to the necessity of putting little bums on classroom seats and the tyranny of parents who want the cachet of a Catholic school education without the Catholicity, who vaguely promise they'll get their kid baptised sometime, with the result that many children at 'school' Masses (the only Masses they attend) stay in their pew at Communion time. Some schools can't even manage to scrape up two altar 'servers' for their parish Sunday Mass.

A glance at the NZ 'Catholic Schools' website brings to light:

•  not Catholic teaching on contemplation, but 'Mindfulness - Building Mental Resilience'. Oh, that's so cool 
• 'Self Development While Working Remotely' relies on a 'Focus on Strengths' with absolutely no reference to Christ - who is "the Strength of all the strong"
• Bi-culturalism' (in a multicultural society) 
• Laudato Si (natch)
• 'Stewardship of creation' (ditto) which means Greenie bilge about climate change
• The only reference to Catholic doctrine, dogma or teaching is in helping students 'understand some Church teachings which can be seen as a barrier to faith' which means, we suppose, Church teachings which require faith because they are contrary to natural reason 
• The 'expectation that all staff exhibit Gospel values'. Note, not Catholic, but 'Gospel'.
  
  
  Apart from a smattering of the word 'Catholic' on the NZCS website (to relate the content to its title, we suppose) it's all perfectly Protestant. The new CEO of the Catholic Education Office is Dr Kevin Shore, formerly principal of St Peter's Palmerston North. His religion, if any, is not included with his raft of academic qualifications, anywhere on the website or elsewhere we could find on the net, but we suppose that Dr Shore is a Catholic.

All of which is a digression, but meant to illustrate that separation of Church and State was never A Good Idea and that no good can come from the Church using a State handout to compensate Church employees penalised by the State's unjust imposition of  Lockdown. And the implausible number of those employees of the Wellington Archdiocese - 65 - bears witness to the exponential, insidious  growth of bureaucracy in the Body of Christ. The Church after all, is for saving souls, not form-filling.

The suspicion inevitably arises of course, that Cardinal Dew and NZ's bishops were promised that handout if they'd come along quietly with the keys to their churches, to keep Our Eucharistic Lord locked up and the faithful starved of the Bread of Heaven.

Ss Peter and Paul
El Greco

Through the intercession of the Apostles, do Thou, O Lord, guard from all adversity those whom Thou hast filled with heavenly food - Postcommunion for Ss Peter and Paul.