Altar Rail Puts Communicants on Right Track

[Maximilian75]

Completely absurd! that’s an utter and complete outrage!

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Thanks Phemie for passing that along! The more I think about it, the more incensed I am by the things that went on in the immediate post-Vat II era.
In fact, I am determined to get my hands on the book “the last Roman Catholic”.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

A Canadian court case

As a priest, I am very supportive of civil laws directed against disruptive people in our assemblies. I have no hesitancy the ask for the full powers of the State to intervene against those who come to create a disruption – and that they be prosecuted to the fullest possible extent of the law.

 

[Maximilian75]

Can you seriously cay that someone kneeling for Communion was creating a disruption that warranted civil litigation?

If we go by this logic, every charismatic person who spontaneously holds hands with those around them at the Our Father should be sentenced to life in prison.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Don’t you think it’s ridiculous though – in the early 1960s, people were required to kneel, then a few short years later, were forbidden to kneel?
No wonder people left the RCC in droves. I’m surprised there’s anyone left from that ugly period.

 

[PetraG]

I’m not looking for our parish to get an altar rail, but it is not silly to want an altar rail or just a way to kneel while receiving Holy Communion. There are people with views on both sides of this who are not being realistic, but whatever that is, it is not silliness and does not deserved to be dismissed as such.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

How would it have hurt to let them kneel and give them Communion?

 

[Maximilian75]

here’s the case
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/34/index.do

and here’s what happened

The appellants opposed a change in the liturgy, approved by the Bishop, requiring communion to be received by parishioners while standing rather than kneeling as had been the previous practice. As a result of this liturgical change, there had been an ongoing dispute between appellants and their parish priest and other members of the congregation. A diocesan directive, describing in particular the manner communion was to be administered and received, was regularly read at services and twice during mass on the day in question. However, appellants attempted to receive communion in a kneeling position. Each was told by the priest to stand if he wished to receive it. After a few seconds, each one stood and, without having received communion, returned to his seat in an orderly manner. The trial judge convicted the accused, finding their actions hampered the spirituality of this part of the service, held up the communion lines briefly and created a degree of anxiety and tension which distracted the priests and some members of the congregation. Both the County Court and the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Appellate Division, upheld the conviction.

a gross overreach of the separation of Church and state… completely absurd.

highly disturbed people. Such people need to be effectively neutralised.

I kneel for communion. Am I highly disturbed? How should I be neutralized?

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Seriously, the Don is always spot on in my view

I like how you have formulated this expression. Thank you for giving me a smile, @godisgood77

 

[pnewton]

I kneel for communion. Am I highly disturbed? How should I be neutralized?

You weren’t arrested or charged with anything. The point is, there may be a lot more to this story than meets the eye. I also noted this was thirty-five years ago. St. John Paul addressed this problem since then making all this moot.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

I kneel for communion. Am I highly disturbed? How should I be neutralized?

I should hope you are not highly disturbed. If you are, you should be removed by the police, under threat of violence against you if necessary. If you would not cooperate with them, you should be placed under arrest.

It is quite clear that this was not a simple occurrence.

As a result of this liturgical change, there had been an ongoing dispute between appellants and their parish priest and other members of the congregation. A diocesan directive, describing in particular the manner communion was to be administered and received, was regularly read at services and twice during mass on the day in question.

That is indicative that these are people who were acting maliciously.

 

[Augustinian]

Don’t you think it’s ridiculous though – in the early 1960s, people were required to kneel, then a few short years later, were forbidden to kneel?

I wouldn’t say it was ridiculous at all. Changes in protocol are sometimes made, and it really isn’t that radical of a change at all.

 

[Maximilian75]

Why couldnt the priest have given them Communion and then discussed it outside of the context of the Mass? The whole thing smacks of mixing church and state in a very sketchy way…

 

[Don_Ruggero]

a gross overreach of the separation of Church and state… completely absurd.

Do you not understand that we are NOT talking about the United States? We are talking about a country, Canada, whose Head of State unites in her own person State and Church.

Americans should really stop trying to export their behaviours to those of us in the rest of the world who have no interest in their concepts.

 

[exnihilo]

The very small Episcopal church I attended before I converted had an altar rail and we knelt for communion. It took much longer than it would have standing Catholic-style, and it would add a significant amount of time onto the Mass for a large parish. My parish has 2 communion lines, one with a priest and one a deacon, and it still takes a while even with people standing. I’m not in a hurry, but I could see it adding a good 15-20 minutes on to have one line go up and kneel, not to mention taxing our elderly pastor with all the walking back and forth.

I had a priest tell me he could offer communion more quickly with altar rails. This makes sense to me since the priest would just go down the line rather than waiting on someone to step up, make an act of reverence and then receive.

 

[Maximilian75]

I am sorry. I forgot Canada’s unique relationship with the Queen and the CoE. Please pardon my ignorance.

 

[Inisfallen]

The demolition of Catholicism in ohhhhhh so many ways began with the MANDATED [but not from Rome] removal of the Communion Rails. I was in church when it happened to my parish and I actually cried.

I’m not jumping into any controversies here, but was removal of altar rails ever mandated by anyone? I mean, in my diocese, every church I’ve ever been in has an altar rail. Same in the next diocese over (which is actually an archdiocese). I don’t think I’ve ever been in a church, in my life, where the altar rail had been removed.

I’ve been in a couple of churches built years after Vatican II that never had an altar rail, but that’s a different thing altogether.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

Why couldnt the priest have given them Communion and then discussed it outside of the context of the Mass?

Well, if you read the case notes from the Court, that you posted, you see that this was an on-going conflict.

When two separate announcements are made at the same Mass, that is indicative of some circumstance in which there has been – and is expected to be – a not insignificant disruption.

I remember many years ago concelebrating Masses at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. I was briefed in the sacristy that, as a priest, I would be one of the priests distributing Communion and that I needed to be aware that there had been disruptive people who had previously caused chaos in the Cathedral – so an armed police officer would be suddenly appear and stand beside me, with hand on gun. If a disrupter were to charge at me, I should occupy myself with protecting the Sacrament – that the officer would protect me by doing whatever was physically necessary to neutralise the threat.

Nothing happened to me but I was shown footage of what had happened before. It was disgusting.

It is nothing short of disgusting to implicate the sacred liturgy in whatever aberrant views one is promoting. The bishop is the supreme moderator of the liturgy in his diocese. His directive should be followed…whether one agrees with it or not – certainly without protest in the synaxis. Such behaviour should always be punished.

No religious service of any sort should ever be disrupted and the State should exercise its power to prevent people from doing so.

 

[Maximilian75]

No religious service of any sort should ever be disrupted and the State should exercise its power to prevent people from doing so.

There is a crying baby in the church. The religious service is disrupted. Should the baby and mother be arrested?

 

[PetraG]

I should hope you are not highly disturbed. If you are, you should be removed by the police, under threat of violence against you if necessary. If you would not cooperate with them, you should be placed under arrest.

It is quite clear that this was not a simple occurrence.

Under what circumstances should this have ever gone to civil court?

From the Canadian GIRM:
160. The Priest then takes the paten or ciborium and approaches the communicants,
who usually come up in procession.
It is not permitted for the faithful to take the consecrated Bread or the sacred chalice
by themselves and, still less, to hand them on from one to another among themselves. In
the Dioceses of Canada, Holy Communion is to be received standing, though individual
members of the faithful may choose to receive Communion while kneeling. When standing
before the minister to receive Holy Communion, the faithful should make a simple bow
of the head. When receiving Holy Communion on the tongue, they reverently join their
hands; when receiving Holy Communion in the hand, they reverently open their hands
placing one beneath the other, and they consume the host immediately upon receiving it.

https://dol.ca/documents/2016/11/girm.pdf

READ THE WHOLE COURT ACCOUNT:
The appellants are Roman Catholics who were charged, pursuant to s. 172(3) of the Criminal Code , with wilfully disturbing the order or solemnity of an assemblage of persons met for religious worship. The appellants opposed a change in the liturgy, approved by the Bishop, requiring communion to be received by parishioners while standing rather than kneeling as had been the previous practice. As a result of this liturgical change, there had been an ongoing dispute between appellants and their parish priest and other members of the congregation. A diocesan directive, describing in particular the manner communion was to be administered and received, was regularly read at services and twice during mass on the day in question. However, appellants attempted to receive communion in a kneeling position. Each was told by the priest to stand if he wished to receive it. After a few seconds, each one stood and, without having received communion, returned to his seat in an orderly manner. The trial judge convicted the accused, finding their actions hampered the spirituality of this part of the service, held up the communion lines briefly and created a degree of anxiety and tension which distracted the priests and some members of the congregation. Both the County Court and the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Appellate Division, upheld the conviction.

There is no disruption described here that REMOTELY indicates the individuals were “disturbed” or caused anything like the kind of disruption that called for intervention by civil authorities. In light of what the GIRM of Canada says about this question, it is a scandal that this pointless power struggle ever got to civil court!