Lamont responds to Harrison & Fastiggi on the Eucharistic teaching of Pope Francis

On November 17 and 24, 2022, the American Catholic newspaper The Wanderer published articles by Fr. Brian Harrison about the statement ‘The Teaching of the Catholic Faith on the Reception of the Holy Eucharist,’ concerning Pope Francis’s Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi (DD). The statement in question was signed by 56 Catholic clerics and scholars, and was issued on September 16, 2022. It accused Pope Francis of teaching heresy in the Apostolic Letter, as follows:

“Digital Communion: A Modern Invention”: Guest Article by Fr Armand de Malleray, FSSP

Introduction

From Lent to summer 2020, for fear of a virus, guidelines forbade the faithful to receive Our Lord in the Sacred Host (or from the Chalice). Being deprived of sacramental Communion, people got used to spiritual communion instead. In spiritual Communion, those in state of grace commune from a distance with Our Lord in the Sacred Host, without consuming the Host or even touching it. But it is a third type of Eucharistic Communion that we would like to examine here. We call it digital Communion.

 

What is digital Communion? Is it about receiving Holy Communion online, as some people wished could be the case with sacramental absolution of sins? No, digital Communion has nothing to do with the Internet (even though its appearance in the Catholic Church coincided with that of the first personal computer some fifty years ago). Digital Communion is a modern invention; it never existed in Christian antiquity. It is when one takes the Sacred Host with one’s fingers and puts it into one’s own mouth. We call it digital because digital is the adjective derived from the word digitus, a finger in Latin, which gave our English word digit (whence also the IT meaning of the same word digit: “any of the numerals from 0 to 9, especially when forming part of a number, following the practice of counting on the fingers”).

Bishop Schneider Launches Crusade of Eucharistic Reparation

Originally published by our friends at The Remnant, it would be good to spread this story -- and original prayer -- far and wide:

By Diane Montagna

ROME, July 20, 2020 (Remnant) — Bishop Athanasius Schneider is calling on Catholic clergy and laity around the world to unite in a crusade of reparation for sins against Jesus in the Holy Eucharist.

The call comes as instances of profanation and sacrilege against the Most Blessed Sacrament have skyrocketed due to responses to the coronavirus, and after five decades of what the bishop terms unprecedented abuse against the Eucharistic Lord.

In a statement released today through the Remnant (see full text below), Bishop Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, says such abuse includes the widespread practice of “Communion in the hand,” reception of the Eucharist “by those who have not received the sacrament of Penance for many years,” and “the admittance to Holy Communion of couples who are living in a public and objective state of adultery,” i.e. divorced and remarried Catholics.

“In the current so-called ‘COVID-19 Pandemic Emergency,’ horrible abuses of the Most Blessed Sacrament have increased still more,” he adds. “Many dioceses around the world mandated Communion in the hand, and in those places the clergy, in an often-humiliating manner, deny the faithful the possibility to receive the Lord kneeling and on the tongue, thus demonstrating a deplorable clericalism and exhibiting the behavior of rigid neo-Pelagians.”

Click here to read the full story at The Remnant. 

Dear Bishops: Take advantage of a God-given teaching moment...

A traditional priest wrote the following to me, and asked me to share it.

As we watch the pandemonium break out around us over the Coronavirus and take a few moments to reflect on just how vulnerable we are as a nation and a race, as our tower of Babel, built with the bricks of electronics, entertainment, distractions, and self-gratification, comes crashing down to reveal a humanity that wallows in fear of sickness and death, messengers of a long-forgotten God, perhaps faithful Catholics are raising their eyebrows over the cancelling of public Mass and worship in regions of the United States and around the world. While we certainly admit the need for due precautions to be taken, does the prohibition of public Mass and Sacraments really contribute to the welfare of humanity?

Regardless of how one may answer that question, things are as they are. However, we cannot overlook the opportunity that presents itself for bishops to hit the proverbial “reset” button on some dubious or outright irreverent practices that have plagued Catholic worship for decades. 

As bishops systematically banned the “sign of peace,” Holy Communion under the species of wine, and (in some places) even distribution of Holy Communion by extraordinary ministers, the liturgical pandemonium common in many parishes suddenly began to calm. Mass can and did continue without these things. And while we may wish these restrictions were rather the result of a newfound faith and reverence for the Blessed Sacrament on the part of the majority of the episcopacy, nevertheless an unprecedented opportunity now presents itself for bishops to patiently and prayerfully discern how much more essential and important faith and reverence truly are, and how dispensable the bad practices have proved to be.

Book Announcement: “Ego Eimi: It Is I — Falling in Eucharistic Love” by a Priest of the FSSP

Rorate is pleased to announce the publication of a new and beautiful book on the Most Holy Eucharist, written by Fr Armand de Malleray, rector of St. Mary’s Shrine in Warrington, England, and superior of the English apostolate of the FSSP. The book, with a foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider, is entitled “Ego Eimi: It Is I — Falling in Eucharistic Love.” I had the privilege of reading an earlier draft of the book and found it not only uncompromisingly traditional in doctrine but refreshing and (in the best sense) provocative in its approach. I would recommend it to anyone, but especially to catechizers and religion teachers. 

From the Foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider:

The “Eighth Sorrow” of Our Blessed Mother

For the feast of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, we present to readers an excerpt from the book In Sinu Jesu: When Heart Speaks to Heart—The Journal of a Priest at Prayer, which has featured here before.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Yes, my beloved little son, the eighth sorrow of my maternal and Immaculate Heart is that my Son is so offended in the Sacrament of His love. This sorrow of mine will endure until the end of time, when the real presence of my Son in the Most Holy Sacrament will give way to the sight of His divine majesty. Then will faith give way to vision, and hope to possession. Then will love be secure and everlasting for all who will have died in the embrace of His divine friendship. 

A remarkable book from and for Eucharistic Adoration

Imagine a combination of St. Gertrude the Great, St. Therese of Lisieux, and Bd. Columba Marmion. Imagine a book that was born in the silence of the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, in the luminous shadow of the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. Imagine a book that draws one ever more deeply into the glorious mysteries of this greatest of all miracles — the Most Holy Eucharist, Bread of Angels, food of wayfarers, sweet incense of oblation, price of the world's redemption.

Such a book — In Sinu Jesu. When Heart Speaks to Heart: The Journal of a Priest at Prayer — has just been published by Angelico Press. As an avid reader, I can say with complete honesty that, of works appearing in print during my lifetime, I have seen nothing like it. I shall offer some excerpts:

Pope Leo XIII on the Most Holy Eucharist: The chief means whereby men are engrafted on the divine nature

Excerpts from

MIRAE CARITATIS

ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII 

ON THE HOLY EUCHARIST

Given at Rome, at St. Peter's on the 28th day of May, being the Vigil of the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, in the year 1902, of Our Pontificate the five and twentieth. 

To Our Venerable Brethren, the Patriarchs, Primates, 

Archbishops, Bishops, and other Local Ordinaries, 

having Peace and Communion with the Holy See.

Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Benediction.

To examine into the nature and to promote the effects of those manifestations of His wondrous love which, like rays of light, stream forth from Jesus Christ - this, as befits Our sacred office, has ever been, and this, with His help, to the last breath of Our life will ever be Our earnest aim and endeavor. For, whereas Our lot has been cast in an age that is bitterly hostile to justice and truth, we have not failed, as you have been reminded by the Apostolic letter which we recently addressed to you, to do what in us lay, by Our instructions and admonitions, and by such practical measures as seemed best suited for their purpose, to dissipate the contagion of error in its many shapes, and to strengthen the sinews of the Christian life. 

“The Christian Liturgy as ‘Sacrifice of Praise’ in the Epistle to the Hebrews” — Dr. Kwasniewski’s Lecture at Norcia

This lecture was delivered on July 18, 2016, for the summer theology program in Norcia, put on by the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies and dedicated to the Epistle to the Hebrews. The lecture discusses Holy Mass as the most perfect sacrificium laudis and the Divine Office as central to the Church's life of prayer. The text is reproduced below in full.

Where the monks of Norcia offer up the sacrificium laudis

The Christian Liturgy as ‘Sacrifice of Praise’ in the Epistle to the Hebrews

Peter Kwasniewski

Where is the Christian liturgy in the Epistle to the Hebrews, or, to put the question more sharply, where is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?

Bishop Schneider on Holy Communion

On this Maundy Thursday we are happy to share a talk given by Bishop Athanasius Schneider on the Eucharist.

The address, delivered in Italian last year in Rome, was translated by Donna F. Bethell, chairman of the board of directors of Christendom College, in Front Royal, Virginia.  Her translation was approved by the bishop, and given to Rorate for the benefit of readers as the universal Church celebrates the institution of the Eucharist at Mass today. We ask that you share the content as a meditation on Holy Communion, but with credit to the translator and source.

Chastity is Impossible: The Kernel of the Kasperite Position

Regarding the debate over marriage and divorce, serial polygamy, and admission to communion, Cardinal Kasper does not dismiss the need for the sacrament of Penance prior to reception of the Eucharist when one is conscious of grave sin. Nevertheless, he does not seem to affirm the necessity of a firm purpose of amendment for Penance, since in the case at hand such a purpose would demand the renunciation of the use of marriage—the repudiation of an adulterous union. Or, if he does admit the necessity of amendment, then he must not affirm the objective gravity of divorce itself (a mere fiction of civil law, no more real, in the spiritual order, than a pink elephant) and especially of attempted “re-marriage” or of sexual relations with someone other than one’s legitimate spouse. Kasper’s error seems to be simultaneously an error about the indissolubility of marriage, the preconditions of absolution, and the sanctity of the Holy Eucharist.

50th Anniversary of Paul VI’s Encyclical Mysterium Fidei

September 3, 1965. Fifty years ago today, right before the last session of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI promulgated his dogmatically rich encyclical on the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, Mysterium Fidei, unambiguously reaffirming the doctrine of the Council of Trent on transubstantiation and condemning the fashionable errors of the day such as “transfinalization” and “transsignification.”

A Special Article for the Feast of Corpus Christi: - THE HOLY EUCHARIST ACCORDING TO CATHOLIC DOCTRINE

[A booklet with the basic doctrine on the Blessed Sacrament.]

by Father Konrad zu Loewenstein FSSP

Adoro Te devote, latens Deitas,

Quae sub his figuris vere latitas:

Tibi se cor meum totum subicit,

Quia, Te contemplans, totum deficit...

Devoutly I adore Thee, O Hidden Deity,

Who beneath these figures truly liest hidden:

My heart subjects itself entirely to Thee,

because in contemplating Thee it fails entirely...

St. Thomas Aquinas

***

PREFACE

We have considered it important to re-state clearly and concisely the sublime doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church in regard to the Holy Eucharist, in an age when notable sectors of the Catholic laity, clergy, and even of the hierarchy, trapped in a bland and merely human way of thinking, and\or seduced by a resurgence of Protestant Eucharistic heresies, manifest the most lamentable ignorance or heterodoxy in its regard, together with a conduct entirely unbecoming to such solemn realities.  

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the diocesan

authorities for having verified the conformity of this text with

Catholic Doctrine, and to the translator of the original into English

  

INTRODUCTION

The Holy Eucharist is one of the seven Sacraments of the Church. The term ‘Holy Eucharist’has two senses: The Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, and the Holy Mass. In the first sense the Holy Eucharist is considered in Itself, in the second sense It is considered in so far as It is offered.

  

I

THE MOST BLESSED SACRAMENT OF THE ALTAR

     As a Sacrament, the Most Blessed Sacrament:

    

     1) is a sign of Grace;

     2) confers Grace on us;

     3) was instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ.

     In particular: