Urgent - blessing question

[Trevelyan]

I have a few questions regarding proper practice for EMHCs:

1 - Is it true that only priests (or deacons?) can bless with the sign of the cross with their hand?

2- What reference says that only priests & deacons can give actual Benediction

This is the story:

A friend of mine, in response to the parish council trying to prepare a “policy” so to speak on EMHCs, said that when someone comes forward to an EMHC expecting a blessing, that the EMHC should bless them with the Eucharist by the sign of the Cross!

Their reasoning was that the Eucharist is blessing, not the EMHC (who obviously can’t give a blessing just like a priest). This basically means a mini-benediction.

I said the best thing in that situation is probably for the EMHC to just say ‘God bless you’ and maybe touch them on the shoulder or head. (Or ideally, for people not to come forward for blessings at all).

What do you think?

 

[cameron_lansing]

Trevelyan:

I have a few questions regarding proper practice for EMHCs:

1 - Is it true that only priests (or deacons?) can bless with the sign of the cross with their hand?

2- What reference says that only priests & deacons can give actual Benediction

1. This signing is reserved to clerics according to the liturgical books. Non clerics use different formularies.
2. Canon 943 is one among several. In the 1983 translation, it reads: “The minister of exposition of the Most Holy Sacrament and the Eucharistic benediction is a priest or deacon; in particular circumstances the minister of exposition and reposition only, without benediction, is an acolyte, an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion or another person deputed by the local ordinary observing the prescriptions of the diocesan bishop.”

This is also to be found in Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship, Eucharistiae sacramentum, (Promulgating the editio typica of rites for holy communion and worship of the eucharist outside Mass, 21 June 1973), n 91.