I
ILdoc82
Guest
Jim Rosengarten gasped when he learned the Vatican wants him to stop calling himself a eucharistic minister. They are “extraordinary ministers of holy communion.”
“Oh, my God,” Rosengarten exclaimed. “What a shame.”
It was not the title’s mouthful of syllables that disturbed him, he said, but the Vatican’s reasons: It wants the priest’s role at Mass unambiguously distinct. Only the priest consecrates the bread and wine, the essential act of Eucharist.
Dismayed by the many small, local variations that have crept into the celebration of liturgy around the world (and also by a blurring of the priest’s role in some churches), Rome is calling for near-uniformity in the way Masses are celebrated.
The Rev. Daniel Mackle, head of the Philadelphia archdiocesan Office for Worship, praised the guidelines as necessary. In some parishes, Mackle said, the Mass “has become like a painting coated in candle soot. It has to be cleaned so we can see its full beauty.”
For example, he said, priests should not be strolling about the church during their homilies, “microphone in hand like they’re Johnny Carson.”
And it is important, he said, that only the priest or deacon may break the communion bread after the consecration, and only he may pour the consecrated wine into chalices.
As one way to promote lay participation, however, Rome is encouraging parishes to use a different reader for each Scripture passage.
At Holy Savior parish in Westmont, Camden County, communion minister Trudy Cranston said the changes have meant “we’re not allowed to pour the precious blood [consecrated wine] into the cups anymore” and “now we don’t separate the hosts” into distribution plates or bowls.
But Cranston, 56, a communion minister for 15 years, said the changes don’t faze her.
But certain kinds of lay activism don’t sit well with Rome - especially if the laity are seen as performing clergy roles.
At St. Vincent’s, for example, Rosengarten and other eucharistic ministers used to break the communion bread at the altar alongside the priest, and pour the consecrated wine into chalices for distribution.
“The image we wanted was of the table being prepared by members of the assembly and the presider, who are one,” Rosengarten explained.
But because the new instruction restricts the breaking and pouring to the priest, Mackle has advised St. Vincent’s that it must conform. He also told St. Vincent’s it had to cease its longtime practice whereby priests and communion ministers waited until everyone else had received communion. Now, they must take it first.
While some members of St. Vincent’s have welcomed the return to strict practice, or orthodoxy, others are very upset, according to Rosengarten, a history teacher at Central High School. A few even wept when the parish made the changes.
About 25 members of the parish have begun protesting the Vatican’s changes by wrapping purple stoles, or scarves, at the base of the sanctuary cross after communion.
For three years, feminists at St. Vincent’s had been wearing the stoles to Mass as symbols of mourning for “the loss of the gift of women” in the Catholic Church, parishioner Pat Imms explained recently.
Support for women’s ordination runs high at St. Vincent’s, and many parishioners viewed female participation in the priestly gestures as powerful symbols of women’s inclusion in Catholicism’s supreme rite.
Imms sees the general instruction as diminishing the laity’s - and women’s - roles in the Mass.
“We worked really hard on our liturgy,” said Imms, who has been laying her stole at the cross in recent weeks.
The Rev. John Kettelberger, pastor of St. Vincent’s, declined to comment, but Msgr. Nelson Perez, pastor of St. William parish in Lawncrest, defended the call for unified liturgy. “I’ve always had the feeling that it’s not my liturgy to change,” he said. “It belongs to the whole [worldwide] community of the church.”
“Oh, my God,” Rosengarten exclaimed. “What a shame.”
It was not the title’s mouthful of syllables that disturbed him, he said, but the Vatican’s reasons: It wants the priest’s role at Mass unambiguously distinct. Only the priest consecrates the bread and wine, the essential act of Eucharist.
Dismayed by the many small, local variations that have crept into the celebration of liturgy around the world (and also by a blurring of the priest’s role in some churches), Rome is calling for near-uniformity in the way Masses are celebrated.
The Rev. Daniel Mackle, head of the Philadelphia archdiocesan Office for Worship, praised the guidelines as necessary. In some parishes, Mackle said, the Mass “has become like a painting coated in candle soot. It has to be cleaned so we can see its full beauty.”
For example, he said, priests should not be strolling about the church during their homilies, “microphone in hand like they’re Johnny Carson.”
And it is important, he said, that only the priest or deacon may break the communion bread after the consecration, and only he may pour the consecrated wine into chalices.
As one way to promote lay participation, however, Rome is encouraging parishes to use a different reader for each Scripture passage.
At Holy Savior parish in Westmont, Camden County, communion minister Trudy Cranston said the changes have meant “we’re not allowed to pour the precious blood [consecrated wine] into the cups anymore” and “now we don’t separate the hosts” into distribution plates or bowls.
But Cranston, 56, a communion minister for 15 years, said the changes don’t faze her.
But certain kinds of lay activism don’t sit well with Rome - especially if the laity are seen as performing clergy roles.
At St. Vincent’s, for example, Rosengarten and other eucharistic ministers used to break the communion bread at the altar alongside the priest, and pour the consecrated wine into chalices for distribution.
“The image we wanted was of the table being prepared by members of the assembly and the presider, who are one,” Rosengarten explained.
But because the new instruction restricts the breaking and pouring to the priest, Mackle has advised St. Vincent’s that it must conform. He also told St. Vincent’s it had to cease its longtime practice whereby priests and communion ministers waited until everyone else had received communion. Now, they must take it first.
While some members of St. Vincent’s have welcomed the return to strict practice, or orthodoxy, others are very upset, according to Rosengarten, a history teacher at Central High School. A few even wept when the parish made the changes.
About 25 members of the parish have begun protesting the Vatican’s changes by wrapping purple stoles, or scarves, at the base of the sanctuary cross after communion.
For three years, feminists at St. Vincent’s had been wearing the stoles to Mass as symbols of mourning for “the loss of the gift of women” in the Catholic Church, parishioner Pat Imms explained recently.
Support for women’s ordination runs high at St. Vincent’s, and many parishioners viewed female participation in the priestly gestures as powerful symbols of women’s inclusion in Catholicism’s supreme rite.
Imms sees the general instruction as diminishing the laity’s - and women’s - roles in the Mass.
“We worked really hard on our liturgy,” said Imms, who has been laying her stole at the cross in recent weeks.
The Rev. John Kettelberger, pastor of St. Vincent’s, declined to comment, but Msgr. Nelson Perez, pastor of St. William parish in Lawncrest, defended the call for unified liturgy. “I’ve always had the feeling that it’s not my liturgy to change,” he said. “It belongs to the whole [worldwide] community of the church.”
why not have the “eucharistic ministers” right up there in the thick of things? In fact, lets let the altar servers take turns playing priest? 
:tsktsk:
