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"I know how important it is," says Cardinal John Dew, "to keep people safe during the pandemic."
What 'pandemic', Cardinal? "Our modelling projections are around about 500 people a year will die from flu-related causes, which is huge. The modelling suggests it’s about 1.8 percent of deaths every year" https://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2020/05/07/influenza-during-covid-19-expert-briefing/
New Zealand has had a total of 22 deaths from Covid - or, quite likely, merely 'with' Covid.. Total deaths amount to 0.005% of the entire worldwide population whether people were locked down and deprived of Holy Mass and the Sacraments or not. Hardly a pandemic.
And what do you mean, 'keep people safe'? You, Your Eminence, are a prince of the Church - not the Director-General of Health. That means, for you, that it is important to keep souls safe; and if, as you insist, 22 deaths is a 'pandemic' it is surely more important now than ever for you to keep souls safe.
| Cardinal John Atcherley Dew celebrates the Novus Ordo ('New Mass') |
The blind are leading the blind. Today at the ordination of Vietnamese Peter Trung Nguyen at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, Palmerston North, it's a safe assumption that everyone received Communion in the hand. So sacrilege abounded. How does the commission of sacrilege keep souls 'safe', your Eminence?
You tell us you consult regularly with the Ministry of Health about what we can do in our liturgical practice. How can you bring yourself to 'consult' with a bunch of babykillers? Please don't tell us you have to sacrifice your feelings in regard to the Abortion Legislation Act in order to 'keep us safe'. If you have any feelings about the slaughter of the unborn -which proceeds as 'essential', regardless of lockdown, your flock has not been advised of such feelings.
You tell us we need to respect their expertise as the medical professionals. The MoH, your Eminence, needs to respect your supposed expertise in liturgical praxis - which should have meant a flat refusal by the NZ Conference of Bishops to cooperate with the Government's order to shut churches.
Meanwhile, at least one properly-disposed congregant at the Ordination today was refused her right to Communion on the tongue.
"Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness" (Mt 23:27).
In my own parish of Holy Trinity Central Hawke's Bay, a request last week for reinstatement of Adoration of the Eucharist at St Joseph's Waipukurau was refused. The stated reason? "You have to have at least six people at Adoration," said Father.
Really? Last time I asked for Adoration at St Joseph's the reason for refusal was that I had resigned as a 'Minister of the Eucharist' - because I'd come to realise, slowly, the sacrilege of laypersons handling the Blessed Sacrament. It seemed like a punishment. I now know that under canon law any layperson can expose and repose the Blessed Sacrament, so it seems another excuse had to be found. It's a pretty lame excuse because at Eucharistic Adoration at St Patrick's Waipawa (same parish), there are never more than three persons present, usually only one or two.
There's no inconvenience to Father in having Adoration of the Eucharist, now that the Mass following Adoration has been cancelled (a major reason, of course, for having Adoration). He used to give Benediction before reposing the Sacrament before Mass, but he wouldn't be expected to do that any longer.
So - like Communion on the tongue - what possible reason can there be for such a prohibition? One reason I would advance would be Bishop Athanasius Schneider's statement that "An unsuitable bishop can spiritually destroy a diocese for generations". And I'm not referring just to the obviously unsuitable +Charles Drennan, who resigned last year for sex abuse. Diocesan demolition had been under way for years: during lockdown the first bishop of Palmerston North, +Peter Cullinane, celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his episcopal ordination.
But now that we've got Bishop Athanasius Schneider - for my money, a living saint - in the frame, let's carry on:
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| Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Auxiliary Bishop of Kazakhstan |
"Under the pretext of the Covid-19 epidemic, the inalienable right of the Christians to the public celebration of the Holy Mass has been infringed, disproportionately and unjustifiably.
"The unbelievable, in midst of this worldwide ban of the public Holy Mass, was the fact that many bishops (like New Zealand's) even before the governments banned public worship, issued decrees by which they not only forbade the public celebration of Holy Mass, but of any other sacrament as well. By such anti-pastoral measures those bishops deprived the sheep from the spiritual food and strength which only the sacraments can provide.
"Instead of good shepherds those bishops converted into rigid public officials. Those bishops revealed themselves to be imbued with a naturalistic view, to care only for the temporal and bodily life, forgetting their primary and irreplaceable task to care for the eternal and spiritual life.
"For themselves those bishops, however, provided access to the sacraments, since their celebrated Holy Mass, they had their own confessor, they could receive the anointing of the sick.
"The following stirring words of God are doubtless applicable to those bishops who in this tribulation, caused by the sanitary dictatorship, denied their sheep the spiritual food of the sacraments, while feeding themselves with the food of the sacraments: “Thus says the Lord God: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. …
"Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep, therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord:
"Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds, and I will require my sheep at their hand and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves.” (Ez. 34:2-10)
"In the time of the plague, which had an incomparably higher mortality rate as the current epidemic of Covid-19, St. Charles Borromeo increased the number of the public celebrations of Holy Mass.
"St. Damien de Veuster is a luminous example of a priest and a shepherd of souls who for the sake of providing the celebration of the Holy Mass and the other sacraments to the abandoned people who were suffering from leprosy at the Molokai island, accepted voluntarily to administer to them the sacraments, living amongst them and to expose thereby himself to the deadly disease.
"Visitors never forgot the sights and sounds of a Sunday Mass at St. Philomena’s Chapel. Fr. Damien stood at the altar. His lepers gathered around him on the altar. They constantly coughed and expectorated. The odor was overpowering. Yet Fr. Damien never once wavered or showed his disgust. His strength came from the Eucharist as he himself wrote: “It is at the foot of the altar that we find the strength we need in our isolation…”
"It is there that he found for himself and for those he served the support and encouragement, the consolation and the hope that made him “the happiest missionary in the world,” as he called himself. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, had said that the world has few heroes comparable to Father Damien of Molokai. Belgium, the native country of Saint Damien, has proclaimed him as the greatest man in its history.
"Our time is marked by an unprecedented and widespread liturgical and Eucharistic crisis due to the practical negligence of the truth that the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, is the treasure of the altar and of ineffable majesty.
"St. Peter Julian Eymard, a modern apostle of the Eucharist, spoke notably on the truth of the hidden majesty of Christ in the Eucharistic mystery: “Jesus with a veil covers his power because otherwise I would be afraid. He covers with a veil his holiness, the sublimity of which would discourage our few virtues. A mother talks to her child in a childlike way down to his level.
"In the same way Jesus makes himself little with the little to elevate them to Himself. Jesus hides his love and warmth. His ardor is such that we would be consumed if we were exposed directly to its flames. The fire is consuming. God is a consuming fire.
"This darkness of the hidden majesty requires of us a very worthy sacrifice, the sacrifice of our intellect. We have to believe even against the testimony of our senses, against the ordinary laws of nature, against our own experience. We have to believe only in the mere word of Jesus Christ. There is only one question: “Who is there?” — “It is I,” replies Jesus Christ. Bow down and worship Him! …
"Instead of being a test, this veil becomes an incentive, an encouragement to have a humble and sincere faith.the Eucharist enables us as Christians to pay our respects to our Lord in person.
"This presence is the justification of public worship as well as the life of it. If you take away the Real Presence, how will you be able to pay to His most sacred humanity the respect and honor which are its due? As Man, our Lord is present only in Heaven and in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
"Through the Eucharist we can draw near to the living Savior in person, and see Him and converse with Him. With the Eucharist we can actually come and adore Him like the shepherds; we can prostrate ourselves before Him like the Magi; we need no longer regret our not having been present at Bethlehem or on Calvary.
"Through the Eucharist we can draw near to the living Savior in person, and see Him and converse with Him. With the Eucharist we can actually come and adore Him like the shepherds; we can prostrate ourselves before Him like the Magi; we need no longer regret our not having been present at Bethlehem or on Calvary.
"On the day of Judgment, we shall have the right to say to Him: “We visited Thee not only in the poor but in Thy august Person itself. What wilt Thou give us in return?” Worldly people will never understand this. “Give, and give a lot to the poor,” they say. “But what good is it to give to churches? All this lavish expense on altars is wasted money.” That is the way to become Protestant.
"No! The Church wants to have a living worship because she possesses her living Savior on earth. Is not that worth while? But that is not all. To give to the Eucharistic Jesus is a consolation and a joy, as it is also a need. Yes, we feel the need of seeing and feeling our Lord near us, and of honoring Him with out gifts. If our Lord required of us nothing more than interior homage, He would fail to satisfy one of man’s imperious needs; we cannot love without manifesting that love through outward signs of friendship and affection.
"If the sacred linen is clean, if the vestments are neat and in good condition, oh! that is a sign of faith! But if a church is without the proper vestments for the service of our Lord and looks more like a prison than a church, faith is lacking.
"People give to every form of charity; but beg something for the Most Blessed Sacrament, and they do not know what you are talking about. Is the King then to go in rags while His servants are richly clothed? We have not the right kind of faith, a faith that is practical, a faith that loves; we have only a negative, speculative faith. We are Catholic in name but Protestant in practice” (The Real Presence. Eucharistic Meditations, New York 1938, 172ff.).
"People give to every form of charity; but beg something for the Most Blessed Sacrament, and they do not know what you are talking about. Is the King then to go in rags while His servants are richly clothed? We have not the right kind of faith, a faith that is practical, a faith that loves; we have only a negative, speculative faith. We are Catholic in name but Protestant in practice” (The Real Presence. Eucharistic Meditations, New York 1938, 172ff.).
"The public cessation of Holy Mass and Holy Communion during the Covid-19 epidemic is so unique and serious that one can discover behind all of this a deeper meaning. This event has come almost fifty years after the introduction of Communion in the hand (in 1969) and a radical reform of the rite of Mass (in 1969/1970) with its protestantizing elements (Offertory prayers) and its horizontal and instructional style of celebration (freestyle moments, celebration in a closed circle and towards the people).
"The praxis of Communion in the hand over the past fifty years has led to an unintentional and intentional desecration the Eucharistic Body of Christ on an unprecedented scale. For over fifty years, the Body of Christ had been (mostly unintentionally) trampled by the feet of clergy and laity in Catholic churches around the world. The stealing of sacred Hosts has also been increasing at an alarming rate.
"Taking Holy Communion directly with one’s own hands and fingers resembles ever more the gesture of taking common food. In not a few Catholics, the practice of receiving Communion in the hand has weakened faith in the Real Presence, in transubstantiation and in the divine and sublime character of the sacred Host. The Eucharistic presence of Christ has, over time, unconsciously become for these faithful a kind of holy bread or symbol.
"Taking Holy Communion directly with one’s own hands and fingers resembles ever more the gesture of taking common food. In not a few Catholics, the practice of receiving Communion in the hand has weakened faith in the Real Presence, in transubstantiation and in the divine and sublime character of the sacred Host. The Eucharistic presence of Christ has, over time, unconsciously become for these faithful a kind of holy bread or symbol.
"Now the Lord has intervened and deprived almost all the faithful of assisting at Holy Mass and sacramentally receiving Holy Communion.The current cessation of public Holy Mass and Holy Communion could be understood by the Pope and bishops as a divine rebuke for the past fifty years of Eucharistic desecrations and trivializations and, at the same time, as a merciful appeal for an authentic Eucharistic conversion of the entire Church.
"May the Holy Spirit touch the heart of the Pope and bishops and move them to issue concrete liturgical norms in order that the Eucharistic worship of the entire Church might be purified and oriented again towards the Lord.
"Once the current tribulation has ended, the Pope should issue concrete liturgical norms, in which he invites the entire Church to turn again towards the Lord in the manner of celebration, i.e. celebrant and faithful turned in the same direction during the Eucharistic prayer. The Pope should also forbid the practice of Communion in the hand, for the Church cannot continue unpunished to treat the Holy of Holies in the little sacred Host in such a minimalistic and unsafe manner.
"We must also listen to the voice of the little ones in the Church, that is, the voice of countless faithful, children, young people, fathers and mothers of the family, the elderly, who in the visible manifestation of their respect and love for the Eucharistic Lord have been humiliated and despised in the midst of the Church by an arrogant and undoubtedly Pharisaic clericalism.
"These little lovers and defenders of the Eucharist will renew the life of the Church in our day and these words of Jesus are rightly and deservedly applied to them: “I bless you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have kept these things hidden to the wise and intelligent and you have revealed them to the little ones” (Mt 11, 25). May this truth give us hope and light in the midst of darkness and increase our faith and our love for the Eucharistic Jesus, since when we have the Eucharistic Jesus, we have everything, and nothing will be missed."
https://www.gloriadei.io/coronavirus-in-the-light-of-fatima-a-tragedy-and-a-source-of-hope/
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