Oh boy. My friend, The Anchoress, is sure to get deluged with comments about this post on a fellow blogger who has decided to receive Communion, without having been received in the Catholic church.
Rick at Brutally Honest, for whom I have a deal of affection, and he’s been a a provocative read for years, has been away from the Catholic Church for a long time. He and his wife have now decided to partake of Holy Communion within the Catholic Church, although without the sacrament of Confession or any sort of adherent “membership,” in the church. He feels free to do this, because “no man has a right to stand between another man and Jesus.” He believes Jesus would not turn him away, nor his wife.
And part of her reponse:
It seems to me that in a mature and respectful faith, if you want what the Catholics have, you go about partaking it the Catholic way. To do less is profoundly disrespectful and, dare I say it, immature. It would be like me coming into your house, sticking my head into your fridge and grabbing the thing you’d prepared for a family event, scarfing it down and saying, “what, it’s for everyone, right? Why should I wait? Why shouldn’t I have it now, when I want it?”
"And his servants going forth into the ways, gathered together all that they
found, both bad and good: and the marriage was filled with guests.
And the king went in to see the guests: and he saw there a man who had not on a
wedding garment.
And he saith to him: Friend, how camest thou in
hither not having a wedding garment? But he was silent.
Then the
king said to the waiters: Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the
exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For many are called, but few are chosen"
So I would say to Rick, why do you come to the wedding and refuse to put on the wedding garment?
However, now that Rick had blogged the fact he might want to consider the slight scandal involved but what that scandal is is not too clear. Might it be having not gone to church for a long time and thus not making a yearly communion? Maybe Rick was a pow all this time; or maybe he was in New York City which would be equivalent incarceration to some, ha, ha. Of course some close friends could suppose events where the most readers and this commentor are at a loss. My advice to Rick and his wife is to head to the beach and find a tourist Mass and do "it". Then, say no more and let Jim Martin and the rest of us die of curiosity as to how things turned out!
`There are any number of churches who offer communion to all who wish to receive it, in their own tradition. If there is nothing different or special about receiving the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, why not just go to those others?
Also find it funny that those who are using their own way to bash the Church cannot seem to let it alone. It is as if they are pulled by the truth like a magnetic attraction, yet they cannot get their surrender in line to attract rather than push away. Rick simply joins a long line of folks that simply tell Jesus, no Lord, what you teach is too hard.
Should I have let her go and hoped/prayed the Eucharist might lead her to the Church?
Not hardly.I pray for her conversion, like always, but she isn't going to learn anything from receiving the Eucharist in ignorance.
As far as she's concerned, the Trinity isn't any different from the Goddess (Maiden/Mother/Crone). And her understanding of Christ is closer to Gnostic than anything Christian.
Who among us is without sin?
What part of "this is my body" doesn't any one seem to get? People who don't see the problem with Rick or his wife recieving can't understand what the Eucharist is all about. It isn't a "meal" it isn't a "banquet" it is the Body Blood Soul and Divinity of Christ. We need to be in a state of grace to recieve HIM. period.