My Catholic School Employer Wants Me to Become a Eucharistic Minister

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EmbraceTradition

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Hello there!

I work as a teacher in a Diocesan Catholic School. The students are going to be attending virtual mass during the year, and my school wants all of us classroom teachers to become Eucharistic Ministers to distribute the Eucharist during the virtual masses. I am heavily against this idea. I don’t even like receiving in the hand, let alone handling Christ with my unworthy hands out to students who I know haven’t been to confession. If I fight back against this idea (our Pastor came up with it) I risk causing a scene. I am a new teacher at this school. During my job interview, the Pastor was “concerned” that I attend a TLM parish and thought I might have negative feelings about the Novus Ordo because I choose to attend TLM. I told him I do not reject the NO. The TLM brings me closer to God, and if the NO brings others close to God, all the power to them. But becoming an EMHC is too much. Any advice?
 
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I think the bottom line is that you can tell your employer that this is not something you’re comfortable taking on and that should be the end of it.

I have to admit that I don’t understand how this would work. Will the students be in their classrooms during this virtual Mass? If they’re at school, why not have one class at a time go to a real Mass in the church? They could probably spread out enough to be safe if they’re safe in their classrooms.
 
Yes, they will all be in their classrooms. They cannot mix in together with the other students. It is unfortunate, but if that’s what they have to do based on the restrictions given to us by our diocese, I’m OK with that. I’m more concerned about communion. We are a small school, and there are multiple priests and deacons who can make the rounds to each class to minister communion. I don’t think it would justify using Extraordinary Ministers.
 
Guidelines for televising the liturgy

Below is taken from the above document-

Models​

There are a number of models that may be used when the Mass is televised. Each model will be further enhanced if texts for the liturgy to be celebrated – including scripture readings and music – are made available to viewers of the televised Mass, and if local parishes arrange for communion to be taken to the viewers of the televised Mass so that their reception of communion coincides with the end of the televised Mass.
 
I suppose people could debate about whether extraordinary ministers should be used, but there’s really no point. Things still remain that this is not something you’re comfortable doing with your class. It can be hard to be assertive and say so, but I think that’s what you need to do.

By the way, you don’t have to explain things. As soon as you say “because…” they’ll try to shoot down your arguments. Leave it at “I’m not comfortable with that” and there’s nothing to argue against.
 
EmbraceTradition said:
I work as a teacher in a Diocesan Catholic School. The students are going to be attending virtual mass during the year, and my school wants all of us classroom teachers to become Eucharistic Ministers to distribute the Eucharist during the virtual masses. I am heavily against this idea. I don’t even like receiving in the hand, let alone handling Christ with my unworthy hands out to students who I know haven’t been to confession. If I fight back against this idea (our Pastor came up with it) I risk causing a scene. I am a new teacher at this school. During my job interview, the Pastor was “concerned” that I attend a TLM parish and thought I might have negative feelings about the Novus Ordo because I choose to attend TLM. I told him I do not reject the NO. The TLM brings me closer to God, and if the NO brings others close to God, all the power to them. But becoming an EMHC is too much. Any advice?
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If you don’t want to do it, just don’t do it. If it then became an issue, if it were even made a condition of your employment, you might try filing a complaint with your state labor board. I’m not sure what good that would do — and even though it shouldn’t, it might even do harm (i.e., retaliation for ostensibly different reasons) — but it might let them know not to push the matter. This said, a court might say that it is the prerogative of a religious organization to mandate what its employees will do, and will not do, in pursuit of that organization’s mission. I thought the Church in our time was all about respecting individual consciences — the “aboriginal vicar of Christ”, per Newman and the Catechism.

The pandemic makes as much of a case for communion in the hand, and eucharistic ministers, that could possibly be made, but I still strongly dislike both innovations (and they are innovations, though their advocates found them in the ancient history of the Church, antiquarianism at work) and do not avail myself of either one. I quit attending my home parish in part (there were many issues) because the pastor randomized the line at which he would administer communion at any given Mass, and on occasion would move to another line in the middle of communion. (There were six lines for communion.) There was no way you could ever know you were going to be in the priest’s line, and I finally just quit receiving altogether, rather than being forced to receive from an EMHC. My new parish does not do this.
 
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Does your parish actually call them “Eucharistic Ministers”? 😮
 
HomeschoolDad said:
if it were even made a condition of your employment, you might try filing a complaint with your state labor board. I’m not sure what good that would do
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It would do zero good. The Church has wide latitude on employment, see the ministerial exception in US law.
 
Anesti33 said:
Does your parish actually call them “Eucharistic Ministers”? 😮
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Yes, unfortunately it seems to be replacing the term Extraordinary Minister at most NO parishes. There is nothing “extraordinary” about the circumstances of having them at masses, so they changed the name.
 
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Then you should reply with a gracious but rather shocked demeanor that they should count you worthy of being ordained to the Sacred Priesthood of Jesus Christ.

Because that’s what a “Eucharistic Minister” is: a priest.
 
If there were ever extraordinary circumstances, this might be one. Even St. Thomas said non-consecrated hands could touch the sacrament when there was some necessity. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to get people the sacraments. Maybe your extra care and reverence will be a good example.
 
Hang on a moment here, I am not sure if I thought out the logistics of the OP’s proposition.

They’re going to make all teachers into EMHCs, and have them distribute Holy Communion to students physically present in their classrooms? And these classrooms have been tuned into a school-wide “virtual Mass” that they are not allowed to attend en masse because of infection risks?

So, I have lots of questions! How will the Eucharist be furnished to the classroom teachers? Will some other army of EMHCs be dispatched with ciboria? How many students in each of your classrooms? How will the vessels be purified afterwards, surely there will be many?

This seems unnecessarily complicated. Have the Virtual Mass and then process the students in, classroom by classroom, to the church and they receive there and then they return to class for the end of Mass. That is how a logical person would do it. Unless there is some circumstance like the Mass being 8 miles away?
 
Without adjudicating the whole EMHC question, if you don’t want to, just politely decline. Seems pretty straightforward.
 
Simply tell them you’re sorry, but you are not comfortable serving as a Eucharistic Minister, and leave it at that. There are many reasons why someone might not feel comfortable with this, and not all of them have to do with whether you’re a traditional Catholic or whether you don’t approve of the use of EMHCs by a particular church. I would not want to do this myself for reasons that don’t have anything to do with the above.

You do not owe them an explanation. You could courteously offer to help out with some other aspect of the Mass that doesn’t involve distributing Holy Communion.

If they decide to give you a bad review or fire you or whatever then I guess you would need to take it up the chain to the Diocese. However, I don’t think the Diocese would agree with people being compelled to be EMHCs when they are not comfortable and there are enough other people to do it.
 
LumineDiei said:
Just a quick suggestion, in addition to not referring to the parish or the form of the Mass as “Novus Ordo”, I would definitely avoid using “NO” as an abbreviated version. While a few on here might disagree with me, the term “Novus Ordo” is often used as a disparaging or denigrating way to describe the Mass in Ordinary Form and some more, shall we say, vocal or strident Catholics with a preference for tradition like to use “NO” to make a slight that the Mass in OF is not really a Mass. Of course, you don’t feel that way, but a lot of folks who do tend to slip in those terms or that abbreviation as a way of “rebelling” against what is the Ordinary and that is something you definitely don’t want this priest thinking about you- even if by chance he uses the term “Novus Ordo”.
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I typically refer to parishes as Novus Ordo, or NO for short, when speaking with traditional Catholics. As this is a Traditional Catholic forum, I felt it necessary to distinguish it as Novus Ordo as opposed to TLM for sake of clarity. No harm is meant in the term. I think it is quite dystopian to suggest we stop using the proper term, Novus Ordo, to refer to a Novus Ordo mass or parish when that’s what it is. When I’m speaking to Catholics who prefer the Novus Ordo, I distinguish TLM parishes and “extraordinary form” when speaking about them, because that’s not the norm to Catholics in those communities.
 
EmbraceTradition said:
As this is a Traditional Catholic forum
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Actually it is not. We have a whole spectrum of Catholics, Christians, and unbelievers here. And we all know that “Novus Ordo” is widely regarded as pejorative. Perhaps it is acceptable in your Traditionalist circles, but you should perhaps update your lexicon to reflect the proper and acceptable terms that will not set anyone off. Your refusal to do so is indicative of the same thing your employers noticed at the beginning, and could prove progressively problematic for you if you persist.
 
If I was the pastor I would seize the opportunity to catechise the students on spiritual communion.
 
Anesti33 said:
Hang on a moment here, I am not sure if I thought out the logistics of the OP’s proposition.

They’re going to make all teachers into EMHCs, and have them distribute Holy Communion to students physically present in their classrooms? And these classrooms have been tuned into a school-wide “virtual Mass” that they are not allowed to attend en masse because of infection risks?

So, I have lots of questions! How will the Eucharist be furnished to the classroom teachers? Will some other army of EMHCs be dispatched with ciboria? How many students in each of your classrooms? How will the vessels be purified afterwards, surely there will be many?

This seems unnecessarily complicated. Have the Virtual Mass and then process the students in, classroom by classroom, to the church and they receive there and then they return to class for the end of Mass. That is how a logical person would do it. Unless there is some circumstance like the Mass being 8 miles away?
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The way I read this, and perhaps I am mirroring the layout at my son’s former school, but it sounds as though the Mass is being celebrated somewhere on the school premises, and the children are watching it on closed-circuit television in their classrooms. At communion time, the EMHCs are going to each classroom to administer the sacrament.

As I said above, if there were ever circumstances that would justify EMHCs, these would be those circumstances. Not requiring the children to leave the classroom actually makes sense — this limits exposure and mingling, and aren’t they doing that for lunch hour in many schools, for the same reason? I tend to think that having a video hookup being watched in each room is sufficient to “be at Mass” — cry rooms have similar setups — but even if not, these are weekday Masses, there is no question of fulfilling an obligation, and it is always licit to receive communion outside of Mass. No harm done.
 
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As @SuscipeMeDomine posted, just say “I’m not comfortable with that.”

I’d post my story but the last time I did, my post was removed.
 
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