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Pastoral Review homiletic& pastoral review FEBRUARY 1995 2 Worth noting 3 Letters from our readers 8 As the seminarian, so the priest Editor By Gerald E. Murray and Charles M. Mangan Kenneth Baker, S.J. Advice to seminarians on spiritual andpersonal growth. Publisher Catholic Polls, Inc. 16 The crisis in eucharistic faith Contributing editor By Germain Grisez and Russell Shaw Msgr. Wm. B. Smith It is timefor a serious, renewedeucharistic catechesis. Assistant editor Mary M. Bolan 22 The annulment mentality: What you can do about it General manager By Clarence J. Hettinger Bernard Belson Unfounded doubtsofmarriage validity can bedetected Circulation manager Phara Vincent in the rectory. Advertising manager 33 Homilies on the liturgy of the Sundays and feasts Elizabeth Schmitz Homiletic & Pastoral Review is By Robert S. Hewes owned and published by 44 In defense of rote religion Catholic Polls, Inc., 86 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y. 10024. By James O'Callaghan Editor, Kenneth Baker. Rote learning, piety and morality promotes more Telephone: (212) 799-2600. HPR intellectual honesty, more religious experience appears monthly, except bi monthly for August-September, and more charity. and is available on Microfilm 50 Threat to Christianity? through Xerox University By William G. Most Microfilms, Inc., 300 North Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, Mich. Do the Dead Sea Scrolls harm the Church? 48106. Second class postage paid 54 The forgotten sacrament for at New York, N.Y. and at By Madeleine Grace additional offices. © Catholic Polls, Inc. 1995. The life-giving power of Confession needs to be Address all correspondence to proclaimed. Kenneth Baker, S.J., 59 Memory and preaching 86 Riverside Drive, New York, N.Y. 10024. By Leo R. Sands Rates: U.S. and Possessions - Emphasis on the written wordhadled to neglect ofthe $24.00 per year; $44 for two years. oral word. Foreign-$25.00 per year; $45 for two years. Payable in U.S. funds. 62 A new look at St. Aloysius Gonzaga Single copies available at $4.00 By Clifford Stevens per copy postpaid. A renaissance prince, he abdicated his princedom and Foreign currency accepted. Postmaster: Send address changes to its powers. Homiletic & Pastoral Review, 65 My favorite priest-From banker to missionary 86 Riverside Drive, New York, N.Y. By Bernard Hwang 10024. 68 Questions answered by Wm. B. Smith 70 Book reviews Publication No. USPS 889-740 ISSN No. 0018-4268 80 How is this possible?-Editorial Volume XCV, No. 5 FEBRUARY 1995 1 In theface of the current crisis, there is obvious needfor a serious, renewed eucharistic catechesis. The crisis in eucharistic faith By Germain Grisez and Russell Shaw • Her husband having died while on an was not just a symbol? Suppose it was, Italian trip undertaken in hopes ofrestor as her Catholic friends believed, the Real inghishealth, theAmerican womanstayed Presence of JesusChrist?Then Paul'swords on for a while in Italy with business asso made altogether good sense. ciates of her late spouse. Her hosts were A few monthslater, Mrs. Elizabeth Se- devout Catholics whose devotion to the ton returned to New York, and the fol Eucharist impressed the widow, an Epis lowing year she was received into the Cath copalian. olic Church. Sometimes she attended Mass with her This incident from the life ofSaint Eliz friends, and one day a non-Catholic tour abethSetonisworthrecalling forthelight ist whispered a skeptical remark to her it sheds notonlyuponthecentrality inCath at the consecration. Shocked, she found oliclife of eucharistic faith but alsoupon herself pondering St. Paul's words in his a possible approachto restoringsuch faith First Epistle to the Corinthians: "For all among those American Catholics whose be who eat and drink without discerningthe liefintheReal Presence has notsimply grown bodyeat and drink judgment againstthem dim but, seemingly, been extinguished. selves" (1 Cor. 11:29). The point is that the New Testament and It struck her that this admonition made the whole Catholic tradition testify in un little or no senseifthe BlessedSacrament, mistakable terms to the fact that the con as her Episcopalian faith led her to be secration of the bread and wine changes lieve, were only a symbol ofChrist's pres them into the body and blood of Christ. ence. Paul would hardly have issued so Not to believethis trivializes Scriptureand dire a warning against taking a casualview the doctrine of the Church. of a symbol. But suppose the Eucharist And today, it appears, many Ameri- 16 HOMILETIC & PASTORAL REVIEW can Catholics do notbelieve it. In the gen bert Weakland, O.S.B., of Milwaukee, who eral crisis of the Church in the United called the findings "certainly an alarm bell," States, noindividual crisis ismoreserious particularly because beliefinthe RealPres and urgentthan this one. This is so not ence is thetouchstone ofbeliefin so much leastbecause,aswe shallsee,this collapse else the Church holds dear. ("Future of ofeucharistic faith is related, as both cause Faith Worries Catholic Leaders," The New and effect, to the broader crisis. York Times, June 1, 1994) The latest evidence that many Catho Analarm bell indeed. Is anybody listen lics do not believe in the Real Presence ing? OneisremindedofFlannery O'Con was supplied last spring in a New York nor's earthy but accurate remark about Times/CBS poll. Among its findingswas the Blessed Sacrament: "Ifit's only a sym that roughly two adult Catholics out of bol, then I say the hell with it." O'Connor three in the United States think that at ofcourse possessedrobust Catholic faith Mass the bread and wine, rather than be in the Real Presence, as apparently did ing changed intoChrist's bodyandblood, most of her coreligionists as recently as serve asmere"symbolicreminders" ofhim. thirty years ago. Now many do not, and, The figurewas 70% for the two youngest asArchbishop Weakland pointsout, the col age groups surveyed (those aged 18-29 lapseoftheir faith in this centralelement and 30-44) and 58% for those in the 45- of Catholic belief signals a still broader 64 age group. crisis of faith. Even among Catholics 65 and older, What happened? The answer is com 45% held the "symbolic reminder" view plex but it is by no means obscure. ofthe Eucharist, while only 51% consid One fundamental cause lies in the per eredthe sacred species to be Christ'sbody vasive secularization of Western culture and blood. Moreover, contrary to what underwayfor the lastseveral centuries and many peoplewould expect, even the ma still continuing. Grounded in a rational jority (51%) of those who said they go ism and scientism that are themselves ideo to Mass weekly or almost weekly think logically-based rather thantruly rational, of the Eucharist as a mere symbol. this secularization process has made be Were these isolated, unrepresentative lief in anythingof a supernaturaland tran findings? Evidentlynot. Other polls have scendent nature more subjectively difficult produced similar results. Times religion for many persons than it was in earlier writer Peter Steinfels summed up the im times. It is modernity's great challenge to plications with mordant accuracy: "For religion. And even though the Catholic centuries, and especially sincethe Refor Church in the United States, without be mation, the church has insisted upon the ingfullyconscious of whatshewasdoing, actual change of the bread and wine into successfully shielded many of her mem the 'real presence' of Christ as a defining bers from its effects until well into this cen mark ofthe Mass. This emphasis on 'sac- tury, her ability to do so has diminished ramentality,' on God's life-giving action sharply(and, it seems, at an accelerating through material signs and physical acts- rate)asthe assimilationofCatholics into water,wine, layingon ofhands, allmedi a rapidly secularizing cultural mainstream atedby astructuredchurch—hasbeenthe has proceeded apace since World War II. hallmark ofthe Catholic approach to wor Factors outside the Church have been ship." Steinfels quoted Archbishop Rem- reinforcedby factors within. Back in the FEBRUARY 1995 17 1960sseveral theologians advanced theo ries of Christ's presence in the Eucharist according to which the reality of bread and wine is changed precisely because of the change in their meaning (transignifi- cation) and use (transfinalization) in the liturgy. In the encyclical Mysterium Fidei (September 3,1965) Pope Paul VI rejected these views. He wrote: As a result of transubstantiation, the species ofbreadand wineundoubtedly take on anew signification and a new finality, for they are no longer ordinary bread and wine but instead a sign of something sacred anda sign of spiri tual food; but theytake on thisnewsignifica tion, thisnew finality, precisely because they contain a new reality, which we can rightly call ontological [i.e., pertaining towhat objec tively is, independent of human thought and desire]. For what now lies beneath the afore into Christ's body and blood is accom mentioned species is not what was there be plished intheonlyway it can be, namely, fore,but somethingcompletely different; and by divine power. not just in the estimation ofChurch belief but Mysterium Fidei should have settled in reality, since once the substance or nature of the bread and wine hasbeenchanged into the matter, but it did not. Theories oftran thebodyandbloodofChrist, nothingremains signification and transfinalization have con of the bread andthe wine except for the spe tinuedto bespread by manyliturgists and cies-beneath which Christ is present whole catechists, converging in recent years with and entire in his physical reality, corporeally the encroaching Congregationalism of much present, although not in the manner in which bodies are in a place. Catholic worship which tends to view the liturgy as essentially an action ofthe wor The intrinsic difficulties with theories shiping communityand no more than that. oftransignification and transfinalization Often ofcourse the versions ofthese the as applied to the Eucharist are at least two.
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