WHEN FATHER'S AWAY, A 'PARALITURGY' AT PLAY

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The Epiphany of the Lord, the first Sunday of 2021, will be celebrated in my parish of Holy Trinity Central Hawke's Bay with something called 'a paraliturgy'.

Adoration of the Magi
Peter Paul Rubens

"The term is used inappropriately to describe the Celebration of the Word with distribution of Communion. ... The term paraliturgy is not used in the universal Church documents. A community celebration of the Word, with or without the distribution of Holy Communion, should not be called a paraliturgy, because it is in fact a liturgical act ordered and determined by Church authority."

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/on-paraliturgies-4452

What the ceremony on Sunday should be called is somewhat beside the point. The point is that while it's going on - Father having taken two weeks' holiday - Holy Mass is being celebrated in Dannevirke, 35 minutes south, and in Hastings, 40 minutes north. Few people would object to driving that far for a good lunch in a cafe or restaurant; in the Mass which is the unbloody re-presentation of the Sacrifice of our Lord on Calvary and the act of our redemption, all Catholics are invited to the best meal on earth.

Why was our Eucharistic community not encouraged to carpool, to offer a ride to parishioners unable to drive, to avoid all the palaver of finding people able or willing to be sacristan, to proclaim the Readings, to play the organ, and above all to avoid lay people distributing the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ with unconsecrated hands? 

The answer lies in the god we have made for ourselves of  'community'. We're supposed to celebrate as 'community', identifying ourselves not as members of the Body of Christ but as a group that gets together just once a week in a particular building, like members of Rotary or your local golf or bowling club.

Obedience to the First Commandment by worshipping the God who died for us on Calvary seems less important than 'being there' for one another, assuring ourselves we can manage without Father, we don't need Father. (What it must be like in parishes run by women who'd like to be Father, I hate to think. In Holy Trinity, thank God, we are spared any of that ilk.) 

Staging a 'paraliturgy' instead of going to Mass doesn't rate even as obedience to the Second Commandment - loving one another as we love ourselves - because in the light of Christ's 'new commandment' of the New Testament, we must love one another as He has loved us, in other words by doing the will of the Father, which is not to celebrate us, but to celebrate and participate in the Sacrifice of Calvary.

Crucifixion of Christ
Peter Paul Rubens

It seems to me that attending a 'paraliturgy' instead of denying oneself - as Christ tells us that in order to follow Him we must do - to the small extent of getting up earlier to get to Mass in the next town, is another bitter fruit of the Novus Ordo Missae (the New Mass).

Someone has objected to me calling it that. "It's hardly new," he said. I replied that in comparison with the Latin Mass, (the 'Mass of the Ages', the 'Immemorial Mass') it certainly is new. As new as milk in the bucket under the cow.

"There has never been in the history of the Church," says Bishop Athanasius Schneider, "a time where the sacrament of the Eucharist has been abused and outraged to such an alarming and grievous extent as in the past five decades, especially since the official introduction and Papal approval in 1969 of the practice of Communion in the hand." 

To which might arguably be added, the 'faithful' are demonically attached. An ordinary lay person may express such an opinion, one would hope, without being accused of endangering the unity of the Church, whereas a prelate like +Schneider is not so free. 

"These abuses are aggravated, furthermore, by the widespread practice in many countries of faithful who not having received the sacrament of Penance for many years, nevertheless regularly receive Holy Communion.

"The height of abuses of the Holy Eucharist is seen in the admittance to Holy Communion of couples who are living in a public and objective state of adultery, violating thereby their indissoluble valid sacramental marriage bonds, as in the case of the so-called "divorced and remarried", such admittance being in some regions officially legalised by specific norms, and, in the case of the Buenos Aires region in Argentina, norms even approved by the Pope."

It would seem highly likely that more than one priest has been advised of such a couple presenting for Holy Communion in their parish, and shrugged their shoulders.

"Additionally to these abuses comes the practice of an official admittance of Protestant spouses in mixed marriages to Holy Communion, e.g. in some dioceses in Germany."

In New Zealand of course, it's accepted by many 'faithful' and their pastors that when both spouses are Protestant they should be admitted, and are admitted, to Holy Communion.

The Angel of Fatima, offering the host to little Lucia and then the chalice to her cousins (now canonised as saints) Jacinta and Francisco, said as he did so, " Take and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, horribly outraged by ungrateful men. Repair their crimes and console your God." That was back in 1917. 

70,000 saw the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima

What would the Angel of Fatima have to say now, after 50 years of the Novus Ordo Missae, of priests celebrating the Eucharist with their backs turned to Him, or even in His absence, the tabernacle having been banished as at Sacred Heart Hastings, to a sort of glorified broom cupboard, under the pretext of that being better for private prayer? 

Sacred Heart Hastings interior shot - minimising its raked perspective

Incidentally, at Sacred Heart the tabernacle was relocated after a time to a Eucharistic Chapel, where not so long ago it was promoted from the corner where it first stood, like the classroom dummy, to the centre of the rear wall. Softly, softly, catchee monkey ... it's surely only a matter of time before Sacred Heart parishioners, encouraged and catechised by faithful orthodox priests, adjust to the idea of the tabernacle redeeming, to a certain extent, the horrible church proper with its freemasonic raked floor. 

But I did wonder at Sacred Heart's large and undoubtedly expensive Nativity scene, why the Blessed Virgin should be deprived of her veil - the veil that ultimately she shed at Calvary, to protect Her Divine Son's modesty when stripped of His garments, readied for crucifixion. 

"In the current so-called "COVID-19 Pandemic Emergency," horrible abuses of the Most Blessed Sacrament have increased still more. Many dioceses around the world mandated Communion in the hand, and in those places the clergy, in an often humiliating manner, deny the faithful the possibility to receive the Lord kneeling and on the tongue, thus demonstrating a deplorable clericalism and exhibiting the behaviour of rigid neo-Palagians."

I'm happy to report that at Sacred Heart Hastings today Fr Marcus Francis (unlike his brother priests at St Patrick's Napier) gave Holy Communion on the tongue, and gave it expertly.

"In view of the horrible maltreatments of Our Eucharistic Lord - He being continuously trampled underfoot because of Communion in the hand, during which almost always little fragments of the host fall on the floor; He being treated in a minimalist manner, deprives of sacredness, like a cookie, or treated like garbage by the use of household gloves - no true Catholic bishop, priest or lay faithful can remain indifferent and simply stand by and watch.

"The day when, in all the churches of the Catholic world, the faithful will receive the Eucharistic Lord, veiled under the species of the little sacred host, with true faith and a pure heart, in the biblical gesture of adoration (proskynesis), that is, kneeling, and in the attitude of a child, opening the mouth and allowing oneself to be fed by Christ Himself in the spirit of humility, then undoubtedly will the authentic springtime of the Church come closer.

"The Church will grow in the purity of the Catholic Faith, in the missionary zeal of salvation of souls, and in the holiness of the clergy and the faithful. Indeed, the Lord will visit His Church with His graces to the extent that we venerate Him in His ineffable sacrament of love."

In the meantime, while awaiting that day, if it's within our reach we can attend a Traditional Latin Mass, and be visited personally by the Lord with His graces by venerating Him in the way Bishop Schneider describes. The out-of-the-way village of Ashhurst in the Manawatu is graced by the Traditional Latin Mass every Sunday, at the church of St Columba. It's only an hour and a quarter away from here ... 

As the first Sunday of 2021, the Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord, ushers in a new civil year, Bishop Schneider reminds us of St Peter Julian Eymard's statement of irrevocable truth:

"An age prospers or dwindles in proportion to its devotion to the Eucharist. This is the measure of its spiritual life, faith, charity and virtue."