Eucharist Synod: Hope & Hype

Cardinal Reaffirms Celibacy; Plays Down Priest Shortage in Speech to Synod: "A senior cardinal on Monday reaffirmed the celibacy rule for priests and played down the shortage that has left many churches without clergymen to celebrate mass, saying at the start of a meeting of the world's bishops that access to the eucharist was a gift, not a right for Catholics.

Angelo Cardinal Scola, the key moderator of the Synod of Bishops, also reaffirmed that divorced people who remarry without getting an annulment cannot receive communion. But he said the synod would have to study the issue and hinted that certain aspects of it should be reconsidered."

This makes me so mad. Yes, the Eucharist is a gift, not a right; but it's a gift from God, not from the cardinals. So are life and all forms of grace a gift from God. The Cardinals, not being God, don't have the right to keep God's gifts from a single soul.

A Catholic reform group, FutureChurch, sent 35,000 signatures to the bishops in support of a petition to ordain women as deacons and make celibacy optional for priests. They ask you to pray that the bishops will be guided by the Spirit to make life-giving choices for the Church, choices that will end the current Eucharistic famine and allow all churches to have the Sacrament.

I do think this is a powerful time for change. Bishops know how hard the Eucharistic famine is on Catholics; they hear it from their laity, from their priests who've turned into Communion dispensers, running from altar to altar and being denied their calling to truly pastor. They see it in the decline in vocations and Church attendance. How are you going to call someone into the Church, for an hour or for a lifetime, if you can't furnish an energized, localized sacramental minister? This is not the fault of priests: in fact, they probably suffer from it more than anyone.

Any mainstream media coverage of the Synod you see will burble about how divorced Catholics, pro-choice politicians and other hot-button issues are high on the Synod's agenda. Don't get your hopes up; or rather, don't fool yourself that in a conference focusing on the sacrament most central to our Catholic community life the only issues of concern are those familiar to North American reporters. FutureChurch did an intelligent analysis of the plans the bishops are using for this meeting. The priest shortage, blessedly, is at least on there; women deacons, one of FutureChurch's asks, are not.

Another of the bishops' goals is increasing respect and awe for the Eucharist, including greater use of the sacrament of Reconciliation. This goal ought to militate for stretching the numbers of our sacramental ministers somehow, by any means necessary. How do you inspire respect for a sacrament that hundreds of thousands get pre-consecrated in "Communion services?" The Body of Christ is the Son of God and it is the Church: both God and the people of God need to participate. Catholics who come for a Eucharistic meal will not settle for a TV dinner.