By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
We are, with official approval, giving Communion to apostates. That is, according to Archbishop Charles Chaput, OFM Cap.
The retired ordinary of Philadelphia spoke on October 22 at a Eucharistic Congress in the Diocese of Arlington, Va. A Catholic News Agency article quoted him: “Mr. Biden’s apostasy on the abortion issue is only the most repugnant example. He’s not alone. But in a sane world, his unique public leadership would make — or should make — public consequences unavoidable. When you freely break communion with the Church of Jesus Christ and her teachings, you can’t pretend to be in communion when it’s convenient.”
In at least two dioceses, Washington and Wilmington, the bishops have spoken out explicitly to make very clear that they are going to deny Communion neither to “apostate in chief” Biden nor to his primary partner in crime, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. They have ordered their priests to, in effect, deny their own consciences should they disagree, and give Communion to such apostates.
Chaput, however, warns that Joe Biden “is not in communion with the Catholic faith…any priest who now provides Communion to the president participates in his hypocrisy.”
The “apostasy” label is flying back and forth lately, with one prelate, according to an anonymous source, reportedly charging Catholics who go to SSPX chapels for Sunday Mass with this designation of one who denies the faith. Strange times.
Apostasy (Greek: apostasia, “a defection or revolt”) is defined as “the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that is contrary to one’s previous religious beliefs” (Wiki).
Chaput elaborated on the “revolt” of Biden and others who claim to be good Catholics while aggressively promoting and funding abortion. “That’s a form of lying. Mr. Biden is not in communion with the Catholic faith.”
Chaput tied the scandal of apostasy to disbelief in the Real Presence as part of a crisis in the Church generally. “Even many who regularly attend Sunday Mass, no longer believe in the Real Sacrifice or the Real Presence. We’ve forgotten who we are as a believing people. This is both a cause and a symptom of today’s lukewarm Catholic spirit, in our nation’s culture and within the Church herself. But that can change, and it needs to change, starting with each of us here.”
In Chaput’s address, “Do this in Remembrance of Me: Memory, Culture, Sacrament,” the retired prelate spoke about “American Catholics and our 200-year struggle to fit into mainstream American culture.”
“We succeeded.” he said, “But in the process, we’ve been digested and bleached out by the culture, rather than leavening it in a fertile way with a distinctive Catholic witness.”
The U.S. bishops are preparing for a Eucharistic Congress in 2024 with the hopes of combatting disbelief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and a dramatic fall-off in Sunday Mass attendance that many say preceded the COVID Mass restrictions.
An NCR Online article dated February 2022 covered some of the objections to the $28 million price tag for the upcoming Congress. Bishop Andrew Cozzens is charged with overseeing the project and presented the plans to the bishops. “That figure prompted Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the U.S. Military Services to ask Cozzens at the conference’s fall 2021 general assembly how the bishops could successfully market an initiative with a price tag that would seem ‘scandalous’ to many Catholics,” according to the account. “That’s my budget for four years for the archdiocese,” Broglio continued, “and I would imagine in much smaller dioceses, that probably represents much more.”
As I write this article, we are coming to the end of the annual parish headcount exercise. Each October, pastors take note of the number of souls at each Sunday or Saturday evening Mass. The numbers are crunched to come up with the average weekly attendance. Those numbers are set in stone for an entire year and determine, among other things, billing and financial appeal goals for each parish.
Reports have come to me that priests are openly speaking about “poaching” parishioners. One young parish administrator boasted of pulling a few families away from a larger parish overseen by an older pastor. This struggle between neighboring parishes is just one more sign of disappearing families in our churches. An archbishop was reported to comment recently that “we don’t have a priest shortage problem; we have a practicing Catholic problem.”
As many of you know, we did not have an attendance problem at my parish with a full slate of daily and Sunday Traditional Latin Masses. We now, however, have an artificial attendance problem, manufactured by the hierarchy as a result of forbidding the offering of the TLM any longer in our church.
Traditional Catholics don’t have any doubts about the Real Presence. They are part of the solution to the crisis of disbelief. The bishops are deluding themselves if they think they’re going to find an answer to the faith problem without their help.
The falling attendance numbers appear to be a general affliction, sparing no community. My home parish in the Archdiocese of Washington, once considered a bustling center of faith in the midst of a large suburb, has shrunken from over 3,000 registered families to half that number. Parishes large and small ultimately pay the price tag for projects at the episcopal and national levels. Where will the money come from if the parishes are scrambling to raise funds and pay their own bills?
The bishops had steeled themselves to stand up to Biden and officially reprimand him for his regular and scandalous Eucharistic abuse. Rome quashed their initiative. At the same time, the Pope, in Amoris Laetitia, opened the door to giving Communion even to civilly divorced and remarried Catholics. If promoting abortion and committing adultery aren’t barriers to receiving the Eucharist, how can disbelief in the Real Presence be one?
Without consistency of teaching and practice, as the Church has always known it, the bishops will have a hard sell ahead of them at the proposed 2024 Eucharistic Congress, even with its $28 million price tag. The bishops, uniting behind a simple press release, making it clear that Biden and anyone who publicly advocates murder of the unborn or any other abdominal crime or sin is barred from receiving the Eucharist would cost nothing. As long as nothing is considered too demanding, the slide into irrelevance will continue.
Pray for the ordinary witness of proclaiming the fullness of faith on the part of our bishops, those charged by the Lord with the primary responsibility for doing so.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@TruthSocialPadre
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