Monthly Archives: April 2006

EXCERPT:
Concerning the title of lay people who help the priest and deacons distribute, I could write reams of material. Suffice to say that the proper term is “Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion”. The bishop, priest and deacon are the only “Ministers of the Eucharist”. Lay people are never “Ministers of the Eucharist”, but they can be, in case of genuine necessity, a great help in distribution of Communion, either in church or to the homebound, and so forth. It is helpful to review what the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments wrote in its document Redemptionis Sacramentum about the participation of lay people involving the Eucharist (my emphasis):…
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EXCERPT:
In our prayer today we recognize the “renewal” that we as a Church have experienced. Like grains of wheat we fell and died during Lent. We rise now to life and bear fruit. Just as we prune flowering bushes and certain trees and they then burst into even more abundant blossoms and fruit, we too are pruned back in Lent. And not only in Lent, but constantly during the year. Each Friday is a little Lent when we are all required by law to do penance. Each Sunday is a little Easter when we rise to new life. Each week is a chance for us to bear great fruit because of the ongoing cycle of dying and rising.
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EXCERPT:
The Church is being forced into a new kind of fast through the scandals caused by wicked clergy. It is bad enough that the people of God have been cheated of their heritage for decades through a poor or even maliciously false implementation of the liturgical reforms mandated by the Second Vatican Council. It is bad enough that catechetics have been neglected or subverted. It is bad enough that seminaries were hijacked by ideologically driven dissenters. Now we are being brought as a Church to pay for the sins of bishops and priests who commit the abomination of sexual abuse of children and minors. While I loathe the way the media exaggerates the charges and inflates the numbers of men involved, I cannot help but be grateful in a reserved way. Jackals clean the land of rotting flesh, after all. They cull the sick of the herd. I think that we have at last now the chance to clean our house with a real spring cleaning. Just as Lent (which means “spring”) is our spiritual preparation through penance and mortifications and Easter is our Resurrection, so too as a Church we must now go into the desert and fast and suffer and pray. The enemy of the soul will tear at us, tempting us to vainglory, pride, desire for material comfort. Read More →

EXCERPT:
Here is my rendering of the 1970 Missale Romanum version of the Exultet. Alas, there is no space to give you the Latin also. The Exultet is also called the Praeconium Paschale. Paschale is an adjective of a Latinized Hebrew word pascha, for the Passover meal of the lamb. The sure and certain Lewis & Short Dictionary says the adjective praeconius, -a, -um is “of or belonging to a praeco or public crier” while the substantive praeconium is “a crying out in public; a proclaiming, spreading abroad, publishing.” In a Christian context this of course also infers the Good News! A praeconium is simultaneously a profession of faith and a call to faith extended to all who hear. Read More →