On the first Sunday of Advent we begin a new liturgical year. Ordinarily a new year means we move forward with new hopes, new expectations, new visions, new projects, etc.
This year we already know our Church leaders are rushing backwards not forward. They are pushing us back into a 1950s style Catholic Church. When people want living bread, they are being force-fed rough-edged old stones.
In today’s Catholic Church, it is 1950s Catholic re-runs.
In mid-September the Diocese of Phoenix announced that it will issue new norms specifying the conditions under which Holy Communion may be distributed under both species. What this means is: “it may be offered to a Catholic couple at their wedding Mass, to first communicants and their family members, confirmation candidates and their sponsors, as well as deacons, non-concelebrating priests, servers and seminarians at any Mass….” And what this means of course is that Communion under both forms for non-ordained Catholics was a temporary experiment. The experiment is over.
In August Bishop Olmsted had also mandated that there be no altar girls in his cathedral. He hopes the practice of only male altar servers will spread across the diocese.
The Church after all — it appears — is not the People of God, nor a community of men and women. It is a clergy run male dominant institution.
And now we learn that Bishop Robert Morlino up in Madison is following the example set by his episcopal colleague Bishop Thomas Olmsted in Phoenix.
Bishop Morlino stressing a “need for reverence,” has asked priests to move in the direction of giving Communion “only in the form of the Host and not the Precious Blood.” Lay people you see are not reverent because they are not reverends. The cup is for the reverends.
Morlino also warns against the “excessive use” of laypeople distributing Eucharist “because it could obscure the role of the priest or deacon.” Bingo! Laypeople obscure a clergy-dominated church.
What a way to get into the new liturgical year! And don’t forget the new “translation” for Eucharistic liturgies. Hardly a translation. It is Latinized gobbledygook. More rough edged stones when people are starving for bread.
Funny…….Jesus had no problems with women. St. Paul said in the Church we are one body and “neither male nor female.”
What I find most surprising however is the way the Most Reverends Olmstead and Morlino have forgotten what Jesus said at the Last Supper.
