ByzCath:
I don’t care about the photo, I know it happened. I also know that the Vatican said that Br Roger got in the line for the Eucharist by mistake.
I also know that Pope Benedict is against intercommunion.
I also know that the Vatican said that this incident in no way should be taken as a change in the Church’s Teachings on intercommunion.
from article:
When he was wheeled forward, “it did not seem possible to refuse him the most Blessed Sacrament,” the Vatican said.
Talk about human respect
That defence has been made since the sixties. Every abuse and abomination is “unique”, until it becomes widespread and the Vatican backs down & allows it.
## Of course it was possible to refuse him communion - Brother Roger could have been given a blessing. ##
The statement noted that Brother Roger shared the Catholic belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It also said his situation was unique and stressed that his receiving Communion did not represent a generalized policy.
Then why is it doing this ? The Vatican is forbidding and allowing the same thing at once.
And what conclusions are Catholics going to draw ? That schism, and refusing to enter the One True Church, is less serious than adultery ? That incoherent pastoral practice is permissible, as long as one is sufficiently high up in the hierarchy ? That indifferentism is allowed to a pope or cardinal, but not to the laity ?
Brother Roger was not a Catholic - he was a Protestant. That, is intelligible. What is not intelligible, is that he should be treated as though he were a Catholic. If he wants access to Catholic things, he should have joined the Catholic Church, outside which there is, and can be, no salvation whatever: as the Church herself tells us. Any Protestants who know the Catholic Church is the One True Church of Christ, and who refuse, culpably, to enter into it, are damned. It really is that simple.
It makes as much sense to give the Eucharist to a dog or a parrot, as to give it to a non-Catholic. The pope’s complaints of liturgical abuse become very hollow, when he commits the greatest liturgical abuse of all. To say that such an act undermines the credibility of the Papacy, is a gross understatement: either the Church means what it says - or it does not. Maybe it has ceased to care. ##
