Scott1
Well-Known Member
Confused Catholics influenced by secular society no longer fully understand the Eucharist and need an urgent pastoral programme to explain its true meaning, according to a new Vatican document.
It says many believers are confused due to an increasingly secularised society [that] has caused a weakening in the sense of mystery and the sense of sin. What they need is more emphasis on prayer and adoration.
The newly released instrumentum laboris (working paper) for Octobers international Synod of Bishops catalogues the views of bishops conferences, religious communities, and lay people in response to a draft text sent out at the beginning of the year.
In many countries, the document says, persons have lost, or are gradually losing, an awareness that conversion is necessary for receiving the Eucharist Thought needs to be given to the great disproportion between the many who receive Holy Communion and the few who go to confession. The paper underlines that it is an act of personal dishonesty and a scandal for people to receive Communion if they are divorced and remarried, deny church teaching, or publicly support immoral choices. It also stresses the need for eucharistic celebrations to recapture the sense of the sacred and for priests to act less like showmen who draw attention to themselves.
The Synods working document catalogues a number of the lights (positive elements) and shadows (negative aspects) that respondents sent back surrounding the celebration of the Eucharist. Generally speaking, the responses reveal a certain decrease in the understanding of the mystery celebrated, the document says. It also reports an alarming drop in the percentage of Catholics who attend Sunday Mass as low as 5 per cent in some countries.
The document says neglect of prayer, contemplation, and adoration of the Eucharistic mystery has weakened the sense of the sacred. Among other concerns it lists improvisation during the Eucharistic Prayer, the failure of celebrant and ministers to use proper liturgical vestments and inadequate catechesis for Communion in the hand and its proper distribution.
It is worth considering whether the removal of the tabernacle from the centre of the sanctuary has contributed in some way to a decrease in faith in the Real Presence, the working paper says.
It says some respondents believe bringing the faithful in too close proximity of the altar and the tendency to turn the altar around to face the people might not sufficiently safeguard a sense of the sacred. The document says it is encouraging that many places have returned to using kneelers.
Priests are urged to humbly follow the spirit and letter of liturgical norms because the faithful show a particular sensitivity to arbitrary changes in the rite.
Among other suggestions from respondents were: greater celebration of eucharistic adoration, the increased use of Latin particularly at international celebrations, a revival of Gregorian chant, and catechesis to underscore the difference between the ordained and non-ordained ministry. Some responses raised the question of the timeliness of returning to the obligation of the three-hour eucharistic fast, the document says. Current church law says Catholics are to fast for one hour prior to receiving Communion. The new 85-page document was unveiled at a press conference in Rome on 7 July. Some 250 members are scheduled to attend the eleventh ordinary Synod session from 2 to 23 October under the theme, The Eucharist: Source and summit of the life and mission of the Church. Pope Paul VI established the synod in 1965 during the Second Vatican Council, and Archbishop Nikola Eteroviç, the Synods secretary general, said one full day of the three-week gathering would be dedicated to remembering the fortieth anniversary of the Synod, which was explicitly designed to foster collegiality between the Pope and the bishops.
Robert Mickens, Rome
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/citw.cgi/past-00239
.... but it does make you think how amazing it once was... say 50 years ago on a Sunday.... all over the world, Roman Catholics would be speaking the same language, reading the same liturgy....every Mass-- all 50,000 or so... all the same. It's a wonderful notion... but I don't speak Latin!
