Today, there was the final ceremony of the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, Ireland. This was no new event for Ireland. Such a Congress took place in 1932, and at its final Mass there were in attendance nearly one million people. Today's final Mass was more modest. Some eighty thousand were in attendance, and at the Mass there was played a taped address of Pope Benedict XVI to those in attendance. A Eucharistic Congress traditionally was an occasion to manifest to the world the Catholic belief in the true and substantial presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, a manifestation that was all the more necessary given the growing secularism that has been at work to destroy belief in the supernatural order, and especially in belief in the dogma of Transubstantiation.
Although the necessity of such congresses seems clear in a world growing stronger in its unbelief in the Blessed Sacrament, the Pope's words betray another understanding of the Holy Eucharist and of the Church than that professed in the past. It is this understanding that needs to be examined, at least in part, in this article. The theme for this year's Eucharistic Congress is "Communion with Christ and with one another". In the very title, we have established a theme dear to the modern theologians, and one that betrays a new direction in ecclesiology as well as sacramental theology. It is not to be denied, of course, that the reception of Holy Communion is one that is meant to further the already existing union of the soul with Christ. That is hardly new. However, there is a shift in this Congress to the subjective dimension, both regarding the nature of the Church, as well as the Sacrament itself. Whereas before, Eucharistic Congresses were ordered to the objective presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, something that pertains to the nature of the Holy Eucharist in itself, now there is a strong emphasis in the subjective aspect of the Sacrament- that is, how the Sacrament acts upon the believer. It is not incorrect to speak of a subjective dimension, but given the modern emphasis on religion as subjective experience, it is dangerous to overly emphasize this subjective dimension.
Let us look then at the Pope's words. The Holy Father situates the Eucharistic mystery within that of the Church's own mystery, as they now put it. He says:
"The theme of the Congress – Communion with Christ and with One Another – leads us to reflect upon the Church as a mystery of fellowship with the Lord and with all the members of his body. From the earliest times the notion of koinonia or communio has been at the core of the Church’s understanding of herself, her relationship to Christ her founder, and the sacraments she celebrates, above all the Eucharist. Through our Baptism, we are incorporated into Christ’s death, reborn into the great family of the brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ; through Confirmation we receive the seal of the Holy Spirit; and by our sharing in the Eucharist, we come into communion with Christ and each other visibly here on earth. We also receive the pledge of eternal life to come."
First we see the modernist love for Greek, Biblical terms rather than ones drawn from the age-old Latin theological language. The Eucharist is situated within the mystery of "Koinia" or "Communion". This communion, of course is an internal one, not to be confused with the former idea of the Church being a visible Society of those professing the True Faith, and subject to a visible hierarchy. This Communion cannot be seen at all; it is made up of all those who are united in the Spirit. This new terminology, or rather, adulteration of an ancient term, has as its object to open the doors to an heretical ecumenism, wherein all Christians share in some kind of Communion through Baptism. He opens with the triple Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Communion, the sacraments that initiate man into communion with Christ and one another. These three, united, are important especially in the East, where the baby receives all three at once. We are told, likewise, that the idea of Communion stood at the Church's understanding of herself- a strange claim given the fact that the Fathers do not understand this term apart from a sharing of spiritual things by those in a visible Society, professing the True Faith. The heretic and schismatic are excluded from such a communion, and indeed from eternal salvation. Saint Augustine reminds us that the Christians cut of from the trunk of the Church are as branches that wither away, and that their sacraments, while valid, do not lead to salvation. Thus already, there is a false notion of communion introduced at the beginning of the talk. Now, there is a certain visibility mentioned by the Pope, since the reception of Communion is meant to be a communal act of the congregation, but he ignores completely the question of whether the sacraments benefit the heretic or schismatic, or even if the True Faith is necessary at all. Thus, the New Code allows non-Catholics who dissent from the dogmas of the Faith to receive Holy Communion from a Catholic priest in cases of "necessity" as long as the Dogma of the Real Presence is confessed. Yet the Faith is a whole, not a collection of isolated parts. Belief in all of them cease with the refusal of even one. Only a human "faith" remains by which the individual picks and chooses what seems true or not true among them.
The Pope then moves on to remind the Faithful that this year ushers in the Year of Faith in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. Perhaps this year of Faith commemorates the one virtue missing at that Council! In any case, we are back to the greatness of Vatican II, a theme never far from the mind of the Holy Father, and cause of the Church's present ills. Of course, there is mention of the Liturgical renewal willed by the Council, a renewal that the Pope views as partially successful, and partially not so. This paragraph is very important, since it yields to us the Pope's own view of the nature and purpose of the Liturgy:
"he Congress also occurs at a time when the Church throughout the world is preparing to celebrate the Year of Faith to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Second Vatican Council, an event which launched the most extensive renewal of the Roman Rite ever known. Based upon a deepening appreciation of the sources of the liturgy, the Council promoted the full and active participation of the faithful in the Eucharistic sacrifice. At our distance today from the Council Fathers’ expressed desires regarding liturgical renewal, and in the light of the universal Church’s experience in the intervening period, it is clear that a great deal has been achieved; but it is equally clear that there have been many misunderstandings and irregularities. The renewal of external forms, desired by the Council Fathers, was intended to make it easier to enter into the inner depth of the mystery. Its true purpose was to lead people to a personal encounter with the Lord, present in the Eucharist, and thus with the living God, so that through this contact with Christ’s love, the love of his brothers and sisters for one another might also grow. Yet not infrequently, the revision of liturgical forms has remained at an external level, and “active participation” has been confused with external activity. Hence much still remains to be done on the path of real liturgical renewal. In a changed world, increasingly fixated on material things, we must learn to recognize anew the mysterious presence of the Risen Lord, which alone can give breadth and depth to our life. "
We have a widening of the view of active participation, that ever controverted concept in the Liturgical Movement. The Pope points out that mere external action is incomplete. There must be an interior participation as well. Yet we must ask: Why must be participate? What is its purpose? Is it the offering of our body and soul to God in an act of perfect adoration and praise? Is its purpose that God's glory and perfection be made manifest by our external and internal acts of latria? Well, not exactly. The purpose of active participation has as its end an "personal encounter with the Lord". Notice that there is no mention whatsoever of this worship having God as its end, simply for the glory of His Majesty- an act of justice on our parts, rendering to God the worship that is His due. No, the purpose is one taken from the new Existentialism, which sees the living encounter as the purpose of religion. This is a complete misunderstanding of Catholic Worship and the spiritual life. How do we know that we have encountered Christ? Can we intuit this encounter? Can we feel it? How do we know that it has occurred? This is a radical shift from Catholic spirituality. It is not necessary that a soul intuit or feel any presence of Christ in order for Faith or worship to be real and pleasing to God. This would require a kind of mystic experience that almost certainly will not occur in those in the ascetical way, that is those who still need to be purified of the concupiscences. Until the soul stills the actions of the passions, this quasi-experimental knowledge of God will not be manifest to the soul. This new understanding posits the experience of God as something in every believer, purified of the unrest of the passions, or not. It is quite false. The notion of encounter is one that the modernists put at the center of one's religious experience. Religion is not, for them, something objective, but something that springs from within the soul, and a religion is true if it causes this feeling of encounter with the Divine to take place within. The problem with the Liturgical reform, for the Pope, is not truly in the content of the new Liturgy, nor even in its thousands of diverse forms. There is no mention of a perversion of the Dogmas of the Faith regarding God, the Real Presence, or the nature of the Mass. The problem is rather that these changes remain external and do not lead the soul to its encounter with Christ which is there purpose of the Liturgy. Notice how the propitiatory nature of the Mass is ignored. There is no mention of the justice of God that is appeased by the perfect sacrifice, for in the new theology, God does not desire any such propitiation. The Liturgy is purely for man's sake, so as to aid him to encounter personally Christ. Even the notion of Communion with Christ is not correct. It is the encounter with the Living God that takes place in the Eucharist- yet more properly, the Holy Eucharist is received so that the soul communicates with the Sacred Humanity of Christ, substantially present in the Host, and because where the humanity of Christ is present, there is also His Divine Person, there is a union with the Divinity, There is no mention whatsoever of Transubstantiation. He continues:
"The Eucharist is the worship of the whole Church, but it also requires the full engagement of each individual Christian in the Church’s mission; it contains a call to be the holy people of God, but also one to individual holiness; it is to be celebrated with great joy and simplicity, but also as worthily and reverently as possible; it invites us to repent of our sins, but also to forgive our brothers and sisters; it binds us together in the Spirit, but it also commands us in the same Spirit to bring the good news of salvation to others. "
What does it mean: the Eucharist is the worship of the whole Church? The Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, not the act of the people. One is reminded of the inane custom in the United States in some parishes when at the act of Communion, the priest says: "Body of Christ", and the person responds: "We are." He follows with some nice reminders that don't really tell us much of anything, actually. It reminds one of the truisms contained at the beginning of "Gaudium et Spes". He could be speaking of practically anything in the life of the Church. Replace the word "Eucharist" with "The Rosary" or practically anything else, and you have the same result.
The last main paragraph seeks to connect the history of Irish Catholicism with the Holy Eucharist and the Mass. Some of the language is innocent enough; but other parts are penetrated with the pseudo-mystical, naturalistic language reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardin:
"Moreover, the Eucharist is the memorial of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, his body and blood given in the new and eternal covenant for the forgiveness of sins and the transformation of the world."
We are not given any indication as to how the Eucharist is a memorial of the Sacrifice of the Cross, except that Christ's Body and Blood are given as a sign of the new Covenant for the forgiveness of sins (this is true enough, although rather vague in meaning given the Pope's ideas on all of these things) and for "the transformation of the world". This is highly reminiscent of de Chardin where everything is transubstantiated in the Eucharist, and in fact, the material world itself is transubstantiated, brought towards an evolution into Spirit. Although this entire paragraph could be discussed, this writer will simply look at one more section of it:
" Our Catholic faith, imbued with a radical sense of God’s presence, caught up in the beauty of his creation all around us, and purified through personal penance and awareness of God’s forgiveness, is a legacy that is surely perfected and nourished when regularly placed on the Lord’s altar at the sacrifice of the Mass."
I am not sure how many Catholics of our past were caught up in the beauty of creation in connection with the Mass. It is a bit of Von Balthasar thrown into the pot, and another confusion of the natural and supernatural orders. Rarely do you find the monks of old rhapsodizing about creation as if they were precursors of the English poets of the Romantic period. Nature needed redemption. It still was under the power of the evil one. So the monks spoke of founding monasteries in the desert, like the Egyptian monks of old, but these "deserts" were not those of Egypt, but the untended valleys and woods of Northern Europe. They were deserts, for they were still under the curse laid upon Adam. They had to be recovered with toil and penance in order to win them back to God. The image of putting everything on the altar that is the product of nature or man's action, while inviting, must be seen in the light of de Chardin and those of the Liturgical Movements. Thus there is a supposed return to processions of laity at the "Presentation of Gifts" whereby everything is basically transubstantiated into God: "Fruit of the Vine", "Bread... which earth has made and human hands have formed". There is not a word about the Mass offered up for the forgiveness of sins, to appease God's justice, or even Christ as Victim and Priest atoning. The Mass only makes us "aware of God's forgiveness". It is a forgiveness already accomplished. We only need to be made aware of it.
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