During a post Thanksgiving Dinner conversation my Father-In-Law commented on how my 6 yr old daughter goes up in the communion line and has her arms crossed over her chest. My daughter insists in joining the procession with us, so I taught her to do this so we don’t have any accidental first communions.
My FIL wondered why the extra ordinary minister doesn’t give her a blessing. I responded that they can’t because they are not an ordained minister. My sister-in-law chimed in that, that’s not true because a parent can bless their children. I replied that, Yes, as head of the family church you can provide a blessing to your children, but a non ordained minister cannot provide a Blessing to your children.
The point I attempted to make was that Blessing can only be given by an ordained minister, and therefore an extra ordinary minister is not able to give a Blessing to my 6 yr old daughter in the communion line. My thought is that if they did, this would constitute another blurring of the line of distinction between the laity and the ordained minsters of the Mass.
Please help me out. I’m not trying to win any arguments, or even extend this one. Set me straight if I am wrong.
Let’s start here. Going up for a “blessing” is not part of the Mass, and it’s not what’s intended for the Communion line. Therefore this practice should not be done. It is adding a ritual to the Mass which the Church has not put there.
You’re right, the EMHCs cannot give a blessing. Your sister-in-law is sort of right in that a parent can pray for a child, but the parent cannot (and therefore does not) impart a blessing.
Only bishops, priest, and sometimes deacons are able to impart blessings. Never (yes never) can a layperson impart a blessing, not within Mass nor outside of Mass.
The word itself “blessing” is one that has several different meanings, and layers of meaning. When we say that a layperson “blesses” someone, we are not saying “blesses” in the same way that a cleric blesses. What is actually happening there is not a blessing (properly speaking) at all but a prayer being offered “for the person.”
Here’s an example: before meals we say “bless us O Lord, and these Thy gifts…” We sometimes call that “the blessing” Nothing wrong with that if we understand what we’re realy saying. But we do not say that the food is indeed “blessed” since that happens only if a priest/deacon actually blesses it.
We make the sign-of-the-cross (sometimes with holy water) over ourselves. Again, we say that we “bless ourselves” and that’s fine. But while we say that we “bless ourselves” we do not in actual fact “bless ourselves.” We can only actually be blessed by a cleric.
A parent can say a prayer over a child. Some people call this “blessing.” But again, it is not a blessing in the proper sense of the word; rather it is a prayer being offered by the parent for the child. The child is not “blessed,” instead the child has been “prayed for.”
The problem lies in our language, and our use of it. We do not have a word or phrase that properly describes what a cleric does that distinguishes (linguistically and theologically) what a lay person does.
For that reason, I discourage the use of the word “blessing” in reference to laypersons because this is not the same thing, even though it’s the same word, and therefore it causes confusion. Sometimes for clarity, we might say that a cleric “imparts a blessing” or “blesses (properly speaking)” or a “sacerdotal blessing”
The real problem arises when laypersons are offering prayers but call these prayers “blessings.” If they are implying that they are blessing just as a priest blesses, they are being disingenuous because what they do is not at all what a priest does, and even worse when we see situations where people think that the prayer offered by a layperson can somehow be a substitute for the proper blessing of a cleric.
Again, it’s a problem of our language, how we use that language, and the fact that there is a serious misunderstanding that holds that laity can impart blessings.
