"If Sacrilege is Your Cup Tea, Boy Oh Boy, is This Parish Just for You"

The Crescat is upset and justifiably in the eyes of any serious Catholic:

I just had the absolute worst experience ever during mass, at my Abuela’s funeral no less. I wasn’t going to post about here but I feel I have a duty to warn you all. If you ever happen to find yourself visiting the Tidewater area of Virginia and need to go to mass… just drive right by St. Therese in Chesapeake. Simply make the sign of the cross and keep on driving. Don’t look back. Trust me.

But of course, feel free to completely ignore my advice if you like your tabernacle located near the church office, absolutely love ginormous burlap banners, and simply loathe kneelers. Perhaps you find it charming and personable that the Sign of Peace last twenty minutes long because the priest likes to walk around and shake everyone’s hand. How friendly, right?

Maybe those stodgy, formal processions aren’t your thing either and you like a little a warm up how-we-doing-this-morning routine before you get down to mass-y business.

But if sacrilege is your cup tea, boy oh boy, is this parish just for you – especially if you have complete and utter disrespect for the Eucharist and disdain for those disgusting “traddies” that like to receive on the tongue. I mean gross, right? Yeah, to hell with those people. Lets just be jerks to them at their grandmother’s funeral.

I mean I’ve heard stories about priests refusing to give communion to people kneeling or on the tongue before but have never witnessed it myself. I just had such a hard time believing a priest could be so poorly formed or dismissively casual with the Eucharist.

Woa, wait a minute, Katrina. 

This is the internet and everyone reading this will know exactly who are talking about.

Good.

What this priest did was totally inexcusable.

It is indeed... read the whole thing for context.

Non-Catholics will likely miss out on the reason for Katrina's outrage.  And not much more than 5 years ago, I would've as well.  It took some faithful and gentle Catholics to set me straight when I took the Eucharist lightly but hey... I wasn't a priest.  This Catholic priest should know better.

The Anchoress (who was one of those faithful and gentle Catholics who set me straight) has an opinion or two on the subject, here she is in part:

I despise these “pita communions” even when the pita is rendered within the specifications of the RS, and for a very simple reason: crumbs.

Pitas crumble. The altar becomes laden with tiny, sometimes microscopic bits of the Flesh and Blood of Christ. In disbursal, more crumbs. They get knocked or windswept to the ground with our movements. Thus the Body of Christ is trod underfoot (or sucked into a vacuum and disposed of thoughtlessly) and this is a grave insult to His Presence.

I recall reading a story about Dorothy Day, how a priest performed Mass in her home and — because he was all groovy and “simple” he used an earthenware coffee mug for the Precious Blood. After the Mass, Day kissed the coffee mug, then shattered it and buried, so it would never be used for anything as mundane as coffee again. I wonder how she would feel about all of this. I think she’d be scandalized, by the pitas, by the lack of piety, by the push-along.

Some things you Just. Don’t. Do. One of them is subject His Majesty to your own conceited ideas of what is “humble” and befitting his Body and Blood, or presuming to know what demonstrates “unity with the poor.” A cousin of mine, a Capuchin who has long-served the poor, learned how much they hated seeing Christ’s Body offered to them from straw baskets and jelly glasses: it caused them pain. They wondered if, because they were poor, they to be denied a measure of Christ’s beauty and grandeur so common to the middle classes and above?

My cousin learned to buff up the good stuff and use it, in honor of both Christ Jesus and the poor who sought him.

She's got more and as always, you should read it all.

What makes this whole story particularly interesting for me is that the involved parish is less than 30 miles from my home.  

I'm hoping my Bishop looks into it and responds accordingly.

It should not stand.

For Christ's sake.