A Valid Marriage

It's no secret that the social institution of marriage is in a sorry state these days. Even sacramental marriage is suffering as evidenced by the large numbers of declarations of nullity granted by diocesan marriage tribunals in this country. I was once told by a tribunal administrator that American culture is dysfunctional with respect to marriage.

The Catholic Church has attempted to counter this trend by requiring those wishing to be married to participate in six-month marriage preparation programs and weekend retreats for engaged couples. In most cases, I think, these are viewed by engaged couples as hoops that they have to jump through in order to have their wedding presided over by a priest in their parish church. Some, no doubt, decide that they don't want to jump through the hoops and end up getting married out of the Church. For baptized Catholics, who are bound by Canon Law, the resulting union in invalid due to lack of form.

What are we to do about the marriage crisis in our Church?

The Archdiocese of Phoenix has decided that the current marriage requirements aren't rigorous enough. Rather than six months of preparation, Phoenix requires nine. In addition, all engaged couples will be required to complete a full course of instruction in Natural Family Planning. I applaud the intention and goals of these measures, but I can't help but think that the unintended consequence will be an increase in marriages that lack proper form because the couples decided the hoops are too onerous.

At the other end of the spectrum is a recent column by Fr. Peter Daly. His pastoral approach seems to be based on a pastoral imperative to deny the sacraments to no one. I might be reading too much into what he has written, but I believe that he is suggesting that if a couple wishes to be married in the church, but does not want to comply with all of the pre-requisites for a church marriage, the marriage ceremony should be performed anyway. God will work out the validity and the sacramentality. The problem here, however, is that the couple that refuses to submit to the disciplines of the Church at the time of the marriage probably does not possess the capacity to give consent to enter into marriage, as understood by the Church, at the time that the vows are exchanged. In other words, their union is no more a valid marriage than is that of the couple married outside of the Church, except that they have an ecclesiastical stamp of approval that reinforces an attitude that the Church has no role to play in how they conduct their personal lives.

There has to be a proper balance somewhere. Catechesis on marriage is incredibly important, but it has to be done well before a couple becomes engaged. Ideally, young adults should know what the Church teaches about marriage before they even start dating. Once they make the decision to wed, it's not unreasonable to ask them to undergo additional specific catechesis. There should, however, always be some room for pastoral prudence. Some couples approach marriage with a better spiritual formation, and others have legitimate reasons for not being able to fulfill all of the usual conditions. That's why Canon Law allows provisions for bishops to relax the requirements of certain canons.

It's a mistake, however, to allow the laws of the Church regarding marriage to be held hostage by engage couples. Pretending the laws don't exist solely to keep titular Catholics from leaving the Church does nothing to strengthen the Body of Christ. The Church teaches with authority. To pretend otherwise is to undermine that very authority.

First Communion Days

Parishes around the area are celebrating First Communion these days, as second graders who have been preparing all year finally get to receive the Body and Blood of Christ at mass. A glance at the Lectionary shows how appropriate it would be for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, as the gospels throughout the Third Week are from chapter 6 of John's Gospel -- the Bread of Life discourse.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinkgs my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abindes in me, and I in him.

John 6:53-56 (read at mass on Friday of the Third Week of Easter)

Two of my girls went with me to mass at St. Joseph church in Egypt this morning, where two children (one of whom is a distant relative of mine) were first communicants. Father Emil Schuwe did a good job of bringing out the reality of Christ's presence in the sacramental species.

St. Joseph church features an elevated statue of St. Gaspar del Bufalo, founder of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood, to the right of the sanctuary. The statue depicts St. Gaspar holding a large crucifix. About a year and a half ago, said Fr. Schuwe, the crucifix came loose and fell, with the plaster corpus breaking into many pieces. In a symbolic way, the fracturing of the plaster body of Christ illustrated for parishioners the suffering that Jesus underwent in his passion and death. However symbolic it might have been, it was still only plaster.

Contrast that with the bread and wine offered at mass which, through the consecration, become the Body and Blood of Christ. It is no longer bread and wine, but Christ himself. The plaster of the crucifix looked like Jesus, but it was still just plaster. The consecrated host still looks like bread, but it is now the Body of Christ.

For all those making their First Communion this weekend, I pray that our Lord find within their hearts a soul that want to abide with Him and wants Him to abide with them. May they become worthy tabernacles of Chris, and may every subsequent communion be just as special.

Gathering Storm

I am sometimes pessimistic about the future of marriage in America. While I can be certain that what the Catholic Church teaches regarding marriage will not change, I am much less certain that marriage, as understood by the Church, will remain a public institution protected by law.

Apparently, I'm not the only one worried.

Four Great Saints

In his homily for the Easter Vigil, Pope Benedict XVI explained some of the signs of the rite. In his exposition on the waters of baptism, he said this:

In Baptism, the Lord makes us not only persons of light, but also sources from which living water bursts forth. We all know people like that, who leave us somehow refreshed and renewed; people who are like a fountain of fresh spring water. We do not necessarily have to think of great saints like Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and so on, people through whom rivers of living water truly entered into human history. Thanks be to God, we find them constantly even in our daily lives: people who are like a spring. Certainly, we also know the opposite: people who spread around themselves an atmosphere like a stagnant pool of stale, or even poisoned water. Let us ask the Lord, who has given us the grace of Baptism, for the gift always to be sources of pure, fresh water, bubbling up from the fountain of his truth and his love!

Benedict gives four examples of "great saints," of which one is Mother Teresa, who isn't even canonized (she was beatified in 2003). Pretty rarefied air for the little nun from Albania.

Holy Thursday Dessert

Those who know me well, and sadly, there are precious few who do, know that I take the liturgy very seriously. It makes present to us the reality of heaven and opens channels of grace. Our daily life and the liturgy of the Church form an organic feedback loop in which we are continually preparing to celebrate the liturgy and the liturgy enables us to live a Christian life.

It is with great expectations that I approach the high holy days of the Easter Triduum. The season of Lent builds toward the celebration of the Triduum. The technical term is the Principle of Progressive Solemnity. Every Sunday is an Easter celebration, but not every Sunday is equal in solemnity. Some are more solemn than others, and the most solemn of all is the celebration of the Easter Vigil. The three service of the Triduum, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, the Good Friday Celebration of the Lord’s Passion, and the Easter Vigil Mass combine to form a continuous liturgical celebration that spans three days.

Every year I enter the Triduum with great expectations, but I am a realist, and I have to steel myself for the almost inevitable disappointment that comes when the actual celebration of the liturgy is not everything that it could be. A very high standard was set by the parish to which we belonged when I was a naval officer stationed in Northern Virginia. The pastor of that parish has since moved on to another assignment, and I suspect that the liturgical excellence that we enjoyed during those years has moved on with him.

The Holy Thursday celebration, at least as I would like to see it celebrated, ends with the procession of the Blessed Sacrament around the church and to the altar of repose, typically in the sacristy. During the procession, the full Pange Lingua is sung, and the mass ends in silence, with the procession leaving the body of the church and the tabernacle standing empty. The altar of repose should remain available for several hours after mass for those who wish to pray before the sacramental presence of Our Lord. The symbolism is profound. After celebrating the Last Supper, Christ and his disciples have departed for the Garden of Gethsemane, where they will spend the night in prayer. We pick up the drama on Good Friday, when we commemorate the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Christ. Liturgically, Good Friday begins with the end of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday.

Being liturgically sensitive as I am, I find that celebrating fellowship with a dessert buffet following mass on Holy Thursday strikes a discordant note. As you might guess, I tend to avoid significant liturgical celebrations at my own parish.

I try to guard myself against being too puritanical, but I don’t want to lose or compromise my sense that the liturgy opens up spiritual realities. Whether the liturgy is well done or not, the reality remains. When well done, however, the liturgy teaches. When poorly done, the wrong lessons are learned.

I remain open to the argument that some form of fellowship celebration following the Holy Thursday mass is appropriate. Like most people, I am influenced by those that I respect, and so my eyebrows were raised when I read this from the funeral homily for Fr. Richard John Neuhaus:

The great Christian convivium on earth is the Last Supper. I remember being here at this parish for Holy Thursday in 1997, in my first year as a seminarian. Fr. Neuhaus celebrated the Mass together with his brother priests and then we all repaired to the rectory for a festive meal to celebrate the institution of the holy priesthood. It was only a few months after the celebrated FIRST THINGS symposium on the judicial usurpation of politics, and the priests were eager to ask the editor in chief all about it. Over drinks and then dinner, Richard put on a remarkable performance. Those who only heard him in the pulpit or read him in print missed perhaps his most gifted forum: the dinner table. He was a world-class convivialist.

After several hours, the dinner was sinding down and Richard had been the center of the entire evening. Nobody resented that, but Richard evidently thought that a Holy Thursday celebration of the priesthood should not be all about him. So he shifted to homiletic mode, and spoke of the wonder and awe in which he held the holy priesthood. More than ten years later I vividly remember his words as he recalled the Eucharistic procession to the altar of repose: "How utterly promiscuous is the love of God!" he began, using idiosyncratically another of his favorite words. Then he preached to us at the dinner table, using those cadences he long ago perfect at "St. John the Mundane" in inner-city Brooklyn: "The Son of the Eternal Father commends himself to our hands; the Word made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary commends himself to our hands, . . . the innocent Lamb who died for the redemption of the world, the Risen One who restores us all to life, . . . this same Jesus, my brothers, allowed me to carry him in my hands. How utterly promiscuous is the love of God!"

I imagine, however, that even a celebratory dinner with Fr. Neuhaus would have maintained a degree of solemnity that would have made it somewhat more appropriate to the occasion than a dessert buffet at which I would have no expectation of a homiletic expression of appreciation for the promiscuity of God's love.

Reconciliation and Penance

When a penitent confesses his sins in the sacrament of Reconciliation, the priest assigns a penance, something that the absolved sinner has to perform as an act of atonement. The grace of the sacrament is not complete until the penance is performed. Long ago, penances could be quite severe and public. In modern practice, penance is private and typically light, the emphasis being upon the mercy of God.

I am often tempted to think that the penance is too easy. I am unburdened of the same sins yet again, and all that I have to do is say a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys? God indeed is merciful, for the penance that I truly deserve would be harsh. If the penance truly was just, according to our worldly thinking, I might be more readily dissuaded from committing the sin, or I might just as likely be dissuaded from seeking forgiveness (or putting it off for as long as possible).

At my last confession, I was given the usual penance of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. As I kneeled before the tabernacle, saying the prayers, I let the words enter into my consciousness, and I realized that these two prayers are, in fact, good penance for the absolved sinner.

In the Our Father we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It brings to mind the parable that Jesus told of the man who was unable to repay a huge debt. He pleaded for mercy and was granted it, but then refused to show mercy to another man who owed him much less. The absolved sinner has been forgiven a debt that he cannot possibly repay. Praying the Our Father reminds us that we have been shown great mercy, and must “pay it forward” to those who have wronged or will wrong us.

Furthermore, we add, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Another of the requirements for absolution in the sacrament is a resolution not to repeat the sins just confessed. Contrition, or sorrow for our sins, cannot be genuine if we intend to continue sinning. Sometimes the resolution lasts less than a full day. If we find that we are repeatedly going to confession and repeating the same sins, then maybe we need to make a change in our life to avoid the occasion of sin. In other words, avoid temptation. The Our Father is a gentle reminder that we need to avoid temptation, and God’s grace makes it possible. We must be faithful in the small things if we are to have any hope of being faithful in the really big things.

In the Hail Mary we ask the Mother of God to “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” Again, we acknowledge our sinfulness and ask Jesus’ own mother to intercede for us on our behalf. She is our loving mother, given to us by Christ himself from the cross. She wants us to be received into heaven, and for that, we must avoid a life of sin. When we fail in our resolutions to avoid sin, her prayers can obtain for us the grace of repentance and contrition.

Now, the next time that I hear the priest utter the words “for you penance say four Our Fathers and four Hail Marys,” I will have an increased appreciation for the penance that I am to perform, and with every prayer, I will remember that I have been shown a great mercy.

First Communion in the Telegraph

I would like to call your attention, in case you might have missed it, to the article on First Communion in the March 6, 2009 issue of The Catholic Telegraph. It has been five years since I raised concerns about the way that the First Communion liturgy was done at my parish. At that time, I was told that we had a dispensation from the Archdiocese to deviate from the standard rubrics. The content of the article in The Catholic Telegraph seems to indicate that the Archdiocese might have rethought its position. Both the director of the archdiocesan Worship Office and the director of the archdiocesan Office of Evangelization and Catechesis are quoted. The specific paragraphs (with emphasis added by me) from the article on pages 12 and 13 are reproduced below.

One issue that Karen Kane, director of the archdiocesan Worship Office, says her office often addresses with parents that seems to distract them from the sacrament itself is “the desire on their part to ‘involve’ the children more in the Mass, for example singing a song after Communion or serving as lectors. In our diocesan sacramental guidelines (spelled out in the document Sacraments for Young People), and from a Worship Office point of view, we strongly discourage these types of practices,“ she said. “The reception of Holy Communion should be the focus and should be where parents and catechists spent their time and energy in preparing the children. What is most important is helping the children understand what it means to receive the body and blood of Christ. That’s the focus.”

Also important for religious educators and parents to remember, said Ken Gleason, director of the archdiocesan Office of Evangelization and Catechesis, is that first Communion should be held during a regularly scheduled Mass, and a special Mass should not be scheduled. The reasoning behind this, he explained, is that the children are joining the Eucharistic community, and “it is hard to celebrate becoming part of the community when the community isn’t present.”

There is not ritual for first Communion, added Gleason. “While there are special rituals for baptism, confirmation, etc. . . the fact that the only ritual for first Communion is the usual rubrics for Mass tells us that we should not add anything to the Mass. It also implies that the second, third and fourth and so on, reception of the Eucharist ought to be just as special as the first reception of the Eucharist.”

He believes that the efforts of many parishes and parents to “make first Communion special” can detract from the meaning of the occasion.

“It means they don’t really appreciate what we are doing at Mass,” he said. “It would be impossible to come up with anything more special than what we are already doing.”

“I wish we could help parents to see that we are bringing their children to the table, that they are now initiated into the Eucharistic community, which has the honor and privilege of celebrating the sacrifice of the Lord and our subsequent salvation, including the intimate experience of Christ through the reception of His body and blood,” Gleason said. “There is no cute song or white dress that could top that.”

I know that our second graders put a lot of effort into singing a song, complete with hand motions, after Communion. The Archdiocese says they strongly discourage it. Our parish has a special First Communion mass in the afternoon. The Archdiocese says it should be during a regularly scheduled mass. During the mass, those making their First Communion gather around the altar during the Eucharistic Prayer and consecration. The Archdiocese says that we should follow the usual rubrics for the Mass, which forbid this. I’ve brought this to the attention of our Pastor and our Coordinator of Religious Education. The ball is in their court to either run with or ignore.

Come Early for Absolution

I've mentioned before in this space that my wife and I often attend the 11:30 am Saturday mass at Maria Stein Center. The Sisters of the Precious Blood who run the center generously arrange for the priest who celebrates mass to hear confessions before mass, with a scheduled start time of 11:00.

If you decide you want to go to confession though, you should show up early.

We took two of our daughters with us yesterday and arrived at about 10:45, 15 minutes before the scheduled start of confessions. The priest was already in the "reconciliation room" (they don't have an actual confessional, so they set the priest up in a side room with a shield for those who don't want to go face-to-face), and the line was four deep. Our little group doubled the length of the line.

The priest was pretty efficient, and the line moved rather quickly. By the time it was my turn (I went last from our family), there was only one other person in line behind me. I don't think that I spent a lot of time confessing my sins and circumstances, but when I was done, I was stunned to find the waiting room packed, with Sr. Regina scrambling to find more chairs for those waiting.

As efficient as he was, the priest was not able to hear the confessions of all the penitents before mass. He generously offered to stay after mass for any who were unable to receive the sacrament of reconciliation before mass.

Why are the lines for confession at Maria Stein so long? Part of it might be the convenient time. Part of it might be the opportunity to confess your sins to a priest other than your pastor. I have to admit that it's been a long time since I've gone to the 4:00 scheduled confession time at our own parish, so I don't know whether the lines there are comparable. One thing that I am certain of is that it is simply not accurate to assert that there is no longer a sense of the reality of sin. There is a substantial population that appreciates the damage that our sin does to our relationship with God and the need to be forgiven and reconciled with Him.

Now what I don't understand is why some people, having just been absolved of their sins, don't stay for mass!