Here's the Problem—Liberal Catholics Have Redefined the Meaning of the Eucharist

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Pelosi takes Communion at papal Mass

By Mike Soraghan
April 17, 2008
Link to original
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/pelosi-takes-communion-at-papal-
mass-2008-04-17.html

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she felt very comfortable taking Communion during the Mass celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI, who has said supporters of abortion rights should not receive Communion.
“Communion is the body of the people of the church coming together,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference after returning from the Mass. “I feel very much a part of that.”

The Speaker was effusive about the service, reading a passage from the pope’s sermon and praising his “beautiful message of hope.”

Staffers said Pelosi received Communion during the service, but not from the pope himself.

The issue of abortion has frequently been awkward for both the Roman Catholic Church and its members who favor abortion rights. A few of the more than 250 U.S. bishops have said they would withhold Communion from Catholic lawmakers who support abortion rights.

In 2004, several American bishops said they would deny Communion to then-Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) because of his views on abortion.

Last year, when pressed on whether Catholic politicians who had recently legalized abortion in Mexico City should be considered excommunicated, Pope Benedict's response was, "Yes."

Benedict's spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, later said the pope was not setting a new policy and did not intend to formally excommunicate anyone. But Lombardi added that politicians who vote in favor of abortion should refrain from receiving Holy Communion.

2008 April Issue of the Catholic World Report

There were several important and interesting articles in the new Catholic World Report, including:

"A Warning on Baptisms"--The Congregation for the Faith issued a statement on Feb. 29 of this year that to use the words, "in the name of the Creator, of the Redeemer, of the Sanctifier," makes a Baptism invalid, and arises from a feminist ideology, by trying to avoid using the terms, "Father and Son."

"Remember the Fourth Vow"--This article discusses the Pope's recent meeting with Jesuit leaders, in which he urged Jesuits to seek 'that harmony with the magisterium that avoids causing confusion and uncertainty among the People of God." Pope Benedict further stated that all Jesuits should "adhere completely to the Word of God as well as to the Magisterium's charge of conserving the truth and unity of Catholic doctine in its entirety." He also reminded them of their vow of obedience to the Successor of Peter, and cautioned lest their work with the poor become politicized. Finally, the Pope stated that "the option for the poor is not ideological but rather born of the Gospel and that the Jesuits must remember in fighting injustice, that it is necessary "to fight the deep roots of evil in the very heart of the human being, the sin that separates us from God."

"Raising the Bar for Beatification--New Rules govern Diocesan Inquiries"
Discusses new document, Sanctorum Mater, introduced by Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, publishes to ensure that the cause for sainthood is pursued "with ever greater care. This is a response to the fact that some dioceses have not employed "necessary meticulousness" in these investigations and have proceeded without "a serious and rigorous verification of the fame of sanctity or martyrdom."

Those ones, the new vanguard speak of the brotherhood of sinners. We must converse among ourselves as sinners, mindful of sinfulness. This said with much bravado, much pride, a certain self-celebration, spoken like James Dean. When did tolerance cross the line? When did it offer its chest for a medal. When was the desire for forgiveness tossed along the roadside in a ditch. When did it float upon the waves too tattered and old-fashioned to tread the waves, the flotsam of shiny cruiser ships, when did it become lost in the wash of the great mechanical edifices of smart-uniformed clerics of reason?

Forgiveness asks for self-accusation, desire for change, a new life.

They rationalize, counsel us to be tolerant of the stinger left in the flesh to fester and swell. They calmly counsel to stunt our wings, circumscribe them, hold them short and buzzing, to go circuitous and noisy like the short-ranged garden bee. No long pennine flutes should propel us aloft. Instead they whisper to stay low to the earth, comfortable in our little plot of weeds, caught in the dry thistles of last year's faults. Let us not change. Let us be. You'll be and I'll be. And this will be our world.