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. ories presented are subtle ones that stress First, there arelimits to what humanmean the "reality" ofthe changebrought about ing-giving cando. Humanbeings cannot, bytheshiftinmeaning, without expressly forexample, constituteanything aperson denying the Church'steaching. But even nor can they make a person a non-person; though sophisticated theologians can per and the body of Christ is his living self, haps believe bad theories without draw not part of subhuman creation over which ing their obvious conclusions, ordinary human beings have dominion. Second, Catholics, using common sense, do con what happens in the Eucharist primarily clude: If what is happening in the Mass is isamatter of divine, not human, meaning- primarily the action of priest and people giving, which we must accept. Although usingbreadand winein acommunal, me the priest utters Jesus' words for him, es morial meal, then the bread and wine are sentially the consecration is Jesus' act, not not reallychangedinto Christ's body and the priest's-and not the congregation's blood but are only symbolic reminders of either—and the change ofbread and wine him. 18 HOMILETIC & PASTORAL REVIEW Many other things have helped along Another important, though less obvi thisprocess. In fact anything, authorized ous, cause for the decline in faith in Jesus' or not, that lessens the sense of the sa- bodily presence in the Eucharist is the de credness ofthe Eucharist tends to weaken cline in sexual morality among Catholics. faith. This is the case, for example, with Underlying what has happened in this area changing the eucharistic prayer into En is an implicit body-soul dualism: the es glish,multiplying the forms of the prayer, sential reality of the human person is re emphasizing the celebrating community garded, not as the body that is abused, (e.g., the kiss of peace just before Com but as something non-material—spirit or munion), Communion in the hand, extra mind or soul-and "mere bodily behavior" ordinary ministers of Communion, and is thought not to impingesignificantly upon drastically reducing the Communion fast. the moral goodnessand holinessof this non- No doubt there is a case to be made for material self. Beyond the devastating im all of these changes; but it is no help to pact this way of thinking has on morality, discussion ofthe falling-off in eucharistic it also subverts the incarnationalism and faith to deny or overlook the fact that these sacramentalism at the heart of Catholic and other authorized changes have had faith. Specifically, it subverts faith in the the bad side-effect of contributing to it. Real Presence. The problem is reinforced and made Sexual immorality subverts worse by pastoral practice that condones sexual sins and makes little of the sacra Ifthis is so of certain authorized changes, ment of penance. To encourage people it is doubly so of unauthorized ones: no who live in bad marriages and other sinful first confession before first Communion, relationships or who otherwise engage in no fast at all before Communion, indis unrepented sexual sins to receive Commu criminately inviting everyone (sometimes nion strongly suggests that nothing partic including even nonbelievers) to receive, ularly sacred is involved in Communion— altering the words and gestures of the lit that people who find themselves in these urgy (eventhe consecration itself), using circumstances do not really "eat and drink questionably valid matter, an overly ca judgment against themselves." sual approach to the consecrated elements (e.g.,consecrating too muchwine and pour Forgetfulness of heaven and hell ing the excess down the sacrarium). Various omissions and other things also Still another dimension of the decline haveimportantnegative implications. These in eucharistic faith is general forgetful include the virtual elimination of bene ness of heaven and hell. Partly this has diction and other eucharistic devotions to do with the optimistic view, now wide outside Mass, removal of the tabernacle spread although at odds with the New Tes to an obscure place in some churches (even tament and tradition, that everyone will placing it at the usual side altar makes an be saved; partly, too, with the condoning undesirable non-verbal statement about of sexual and other sins and the down the Blessed Sacrament), little or no pause playing ofpenance—for people with more for thanksgiving after Communion, and, or less troubled consciences do not gener in all too many cases, weak and ambigu ally careto think much about an afterlife. ous homilies on Holy Thursday and Cor But partly it has to do simply with the pus Christi. emphasis in many liturgies upon the here- FEBRUARY 1995 19 and-now: upon us, upon this group of enceis clear. Considerthe Council ofTrent's people gathered in this place for gratifying definitive canons "onthemostholysacra interaction and mutual encouragement, ment ofthe Eucharist,"especially the first rather than upon our links with the whole and second: communion ofsaintsincludingMaryand the blessed in heaven. Many people who 1.If anyone denies thatthebodyandblood, participate in Mass today,including many together with the soul and divinity, of our priests who preside, do not appear to have Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole alivelysense thattheyarebeing drawn into Christ is truly, really, and substantially con tained in the sacrament of the most holy Eu Jesus' resurrection lifeandare sharing even charist, but says that Christis present in the now in heaven. sacrament only as in a sign or figure, or by Jesus emphasizes the necessity of the his power: let him be anathema. (DS 1651/ Eucharist precisely asthe food that gives 883) heavenly life. It is not an option but a 2. Ifanyone says that the substance ofbread requirement for those who would have and wine remains in the holy sacrament ofthe eternal life (cf. John 6:26-59). But the Eucharist together with the body and blood ofour Lord Jesus Christ, and denies that won requirement-that is to say, the Eucha derfulandextraordinary change of the whole rist—loses its own force and meaning to substance of the bread into Christ's body and the extent that the reality of eternal life the whole substance ofthe wine into his blood is tacitly set aside in the 'we-here-now' while only the appearances ofbread and wine remain, a change which the Catholic Church liturgical celebrations so common today. has most fittingly called transubstantiation: The Church's teaching on the Real Pres let him be anathema. (DS 1652/884)

Dr. Germain Grisez holds the Flynn Chair in Christian Ethics at Mount Saint Mary's Col Mr. RussellShawis DirectorofPublicInfor lege,Emmitsburg,Md. He is writingasumma mation for the Knights ofColumbus. His most ofmoral theology under the generaltitle: The recent book is To Hunt, To Shoot, To Enter Way of the Lord Jesus. Its second volume, tain:Clericalism andthe CatholicLaity (Igna LivingaChristian Life, appeared in1993 (Fran tius Press 1993). His last article in HPR ap ciscan Press). peared in July 1994.

20 HOMILETIC & PASTORAL REVIEW Trent cites the words of the synoptic in the Real Presence. Initiating and con gospels (Matt.26:26-28; Mark 14:22-24; ducting such a renewed catechesis are in Luke 22:19-20) to support the proposi the first instance responsibilities of the tion that when Jesus instituted the sacra Church's pastoral leaders. ment of the Eucharist at the Last Supper Similarly, there is need-for its own "he bore witness in express and unambig sake and also for its bearing upon eucha uous words that, after the blessing ofthe ristic faith - for a clear and forceful reaf bread and wine, he was offering them as firmation of the Church's teaching on sex his own body and his own blood." Trent ual morality, presented in homilies and alsopointsout thatthesewordsof institu catechesis just as Pope John Paul II long tion wererepeated by St. Paul (1 Cor. 11: has done. Bishops should make it clear, 24-25). as John Paul does in the encyclical on In some ways, though, the eucharistic moral principles Veritatis Splendor, that passages in John'sgospel andin First Co those who dissent from the received teach rinthians are more powerful evidence of ingon sexual moralityaredenyingrevealed Jesus' bodily presence inthe Eucharistthan truth. Bishops and priests should elimi even the words of institution. The sixth nate the abuse ofgeneral absolution where chapter of John not only makes it clear it exists, and begin urging people who have that Jesus taught that his disciples must committed moral sins to repent and con eat his flesh and drink his blood but also fess them. Pastors at all levels need to explains the pointof doing so: bodilycom teach and preach about heaven, and to munion with him is the basis for the full call attention to the frightening truth that personal communion essential to having those who die in unrepented mortal sin "life"-that is, graceand salvation. Since will not go there. theWord became flesh, Jesus' living body Ordinary Catholics who themselves be is divine, and union with it is union with lieve inthe Real Presence also have a con God. tribution to make. As our analysis of the The more than symbolic force of Je problem suggests, they should show rever sus' teaching is underlined at the conclu encetowardthe Blessed Sacrament in every sion ofthe chapter (John 6:60-71). Many way possible, urge catechists and priests of his disciples found his sayingtoo hard to teach and preach sound doctrine, and and went away. This would have made explainthe Eucharist correctlywhen speak no sense if they had understood him as ing with confused people and instructing speaking in merely symbolic terms. But children. They also should communicate instead of modifying his teaching, Jesus respectfully but firmly withtheir bishops, challenged the Twelve, too: "Will you also urgingthem to provide better instruction, goaway?" To that challenge Peter replied: promoteeucharistic adoration (FortyHours, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have exposition ofthe Blessed Sacrament, Bene the words of eternal life." This has been diction). They should work against irrev the response of believers from Peter's time erence, especially by doing what they can to Elizabeth Seton's-and now also to ours. to eliminate liturgical abuses. In the face of the current crisis of eu In this crisis of eucharistic faith the charistic faith, there is obvious need for stakes arevery high. How high, Jesus him a serious, renewed eucharistic catechesis selfmakes clear: "Unless you eat the flesh stressing, aswe have suggested,the scrip of the Son of Man and drink his blood, tural and dogmatic foundations ofbelief you have no life in you" (John 6:53). •

FEBRUARY 1995 21