A Diagnosis at Last!

People have long wondered what is wrong with me; but at last, thanks to Elizabeth Harrington (via Joseph Shaw), an accurate diagnosis has been made. I suffer from an ‘over-emphasis on Christ’s divinity and on human sinfulness.’

Well that's a relief.  Now it's official, I hope that I will be offered full support for my condition: communion rails, tolerance of kneeling and receiving on the tongue, regular confession made available - that kind of thing.

Note, in passing, the beauty of her thinking: how she can move straight from:

‘The “General Instruction of the Roman Missal” # 161 makes it quite clear that the choice of how to receive communion is the communicant’s. No minister may dictate whether communicants receive in the hand or on the tongue.’

to, in the very next sentence:

‘Receiving communion on the tongue when the majority receive in the hand disrupts the unity that uniformity of posture and practice at Communion symbolises and builds.’

This presents, in a microcosm, the strategy that has been used to destroy traditional Catholic practice:

• First, introduce an option that is different from traditional practice;
• Then educate/indoctrinate people (especially children: how many are taught of their right to receive on the tongue?);
• Make it difficult for the traditional option to be exercised (‘It is awkward for ministers to give communion on the tongue to people who are standing,’)
• Then marginalise and ridicule any who retain the traditional practice;
• Then move to make the new option not only normative but effectively compulsory.

It is curious how uniformity of practice is an irrelevant consideration when the new option is introduced, but becomes a guiding principle in trying finally to suppress the traditional practice.

***

In the meantime, I await with interest Ms Harrington's founding of the Church of Latter Day Cannibals, based on the following syllogism:

'We now understand that Christ is present in several special ways at Mass apart from in the consecrated elements, for example in the assembly which gathers.'

Christ commanded us to eat His flesh and drink His blood.

Therefore...