By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Navy chief petty officers are known to often intone the mantra “Ignorance is a renewable resource” like a Greek chorus. They have learned that their profession of training junior sailors is one that calls for constant vigilance lest war-fighting and sea-going knowledge and skills atrophy and military disaster, or, at the very least, inefficiency, results.
The same is true for Catholic Christians: No religious body in the world has developed doctrine and understanding of Scripture and Tradition as has the Church under the guidance of the Holy Ghost for 2,000 years. No one is blessed as are we Catholics with such a wealth of catechetical riches. At the same time, however, no one can fall harder than a Catholic who is ignorant of the truth.
We are seeing the results of longstanding neglect of Catholic faith and morals resulting in part from the collapse of the Catholic educational system in schools and parishes for nearly 60 years now. Ignorance is a dangerous thing in the Church because of the childish ranting and rebellion that it encourages and perpetuates. One who is enslaved to ignorance is ruled by passions and emotion, a disorder of intellect and will that can end in Hell.
A permanent deacon who graduated from my putative Catholic high school in suburban Maryland and who now blogs from his diocese in New York recently broadcast that Lady Gaga favorably reviewed a priest who pastors an “LGBT-friendly” parish in New York. The deacon shared on his Aleteia-sponsored blog that she posted a photo on her Facebook page of the said priest and praised his telling the congregation: “The Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect but the food that God gives us.”
The priest was evidently quoting loosely from Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium n. 47 where he says:
“The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.”
The Holy Father then goes on to quote from St. Ambrose and St. Cyril of Alexandria to the effect that the Eucharist is necessary for the forgiveness of sins. What is lacking in this context is the further information that development of doctrine under the guidance of the Holy Spirit has led the Church to understand and teach that because Christ present in the Eucharist forgives venial sins only, any Catholic guilty of mortal sin must seek the Lord’s mercy in sacramental Confession before approaching His true and real Presence in the Eucharist.
Any talk today of forgiving sins in the context of reception of the Eucharist without specifying this distinction between mortal and venial is intentionally and irresponsibly withholding necessary information and frustrating development of mature adult Catholic faith.
Pope Francis would surely agree that one of the great maladies in the Body of Christ today is the number of adult Catholics consigned to perpetual frustration as they attempt to navigate a morally complex world equipped only with a 13-year-old’s understanding of the faith.
So many parents abandoned catechesis after eighth or ninth-grade Confirmation that we are in the midst of an epidemic of uncatechized adults. Carefully offering the proper distinctions in a case as sensitive as the Eucharist surely qualifies as a necessary step toward correcting this crisis.
What is dangerous about the priest’s above-quoted statement? It is based on a straw man: The person initiating this must have concocted the idea that Communion is for the “perfect,” because the Church has never taught this. Basic catechesis for second graders in formation for First Communion teaches that one only need be in a state of grace to receive the Eucharist. The Eucharist is perfect because the Eucharist is God. We who receive the Eucharist do so for the reason that we are not perfect because we are God’s creatures in need of the grace He thus gives.
This incident was born of ignorance and perpetuated through ignorance. The darkness of ignorance is perpetuated because of an adolescent obsession with worldly glamour and fame.
The episode makes clear that lack of philosophy in the categories of Plato and Aquinas together with abysmal catechesis in sacramental theology has ignited a disaster in the Church. The ill-advised comments of certain leaders have served as the matches that have ignited the dry and neglected tinder of under-educated Catholic adults.
The priest from New York who got the “attaboy” from Lady Gaga has also gotten high marks for catering to people who don’t want to “feel like they’re in church” — as remarked by a young man interviewed for a New York Times article reviewing the parish prior to Pope Benedict’s U.S. visit. A “Jazz Mass” at the parish reportedly led one lady to remark that she felt she should have a martini in her hand. Mass, however, is not supposed to be worldly, that is, for people who don’t like “church.” Some of the early Christians were coming drunk from the agape meal to celebrate the Eucharist, a train wreck of worldliness with the sacred things of the Church. St. Paul responded to this ecclesial crisis by making clear that worldliness has no role to play in the sacred rites when he said, “Don’t you have homes to eat in?” He thus gave an apostolic basis to the now obligatory fast required of all Catholics prior to receiving the Eucharist at Holy Mass. The regulation that priests must cover their street clothes, to include the now-ubiquitous plastic tab collars, while celebrating Mass also comes from the mind of the Church in this regard.
Ignorance is a renewable resource and there is no ignorance more dangerous than being deprived of Christ and the truth of His Gospel. Be the “salt of the earth and the light of the world” by learning the truth and sharing it freely with others, in season and out of season.
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Join me for a pilgrimage to Italy for the canonization of Mother Teresa in Rome and Assisi, Florence, and Venice from September 1-9, 2016. Go to proximotravel.com for more details or email me for info at mcitl.blogspot.com@gmail.com.
Thank you for reading, and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. @MCITLFrAphorism
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