Charlotte and the Crime of Kneeling
Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte and his priests at Our Lady of Grace parish in Greensboro refused Holy Communion to a reverent Catholic family after they approached the altar rail during a Confirmation Mass. LifeSiteNews reported the father’s statement that Martin “simply ignored” them and that “all the priests turned their backs” while everyone else received Communion. The father called the experience humiliating.
Humiliating indeed.
The humiliation was the point, or at least the natural fruit of the policy. These reverent Catholics were not public blasphemers, same-sex couples seeking a photo-op blessing, or Anglican clergy cosplaying apostolic succession. They were a Catholic family kneeling before what the Church teaches is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ.
See full video here: https://youtube.com/shorts/V_7jvyqvVdk?si=ZQLVvlx
Their apparent offense was that they wanted to receive as though the Eucharist is actually God.
Martin’s campaign in Charlotte has never been merely about “order.” He ordered parish churches to stop using altar rails and remove kneelers for the reception of Holy Communion. He suppressed parish celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass and moved the old rite into a small former Protestant chapel far from Charlotte. His proposed and enacted liturgical regime has been aimed at the visible signs of tradition: rails, kneelers, ad orientem, Latin, ornate vestments, and the old instincts of reverence.
The absurdity is that even the postconciliar legal framework does not support denying Communion merely because someone kneels. Redemptionis Sacramentum states that it is not licit to deny Holy Communion solely because a member of the faithful wishes to receive kneeling or standing. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal for the United States likewise says that standing is the norm, but communicants should not be denied Holy Communion because they kneel.
So even by their own books, this should not happen.
And yet here we are.
Martin has created a climate in which kneeling at the rail is no longer treated as a normal Catholic act of reverence, but as a visible contradiction of the diocesan project. Once that climate exists, things like this become almost inevitable. The old gesture becomes suspect. The people who keep doing it become “those people.” The rail becomes a provocation merely by remaining what it always was.
That is how revolutions usually work. First the thing is discouraged. Then it is explained away. Then it is called divisive. Then the people who still do it are treated as if they brought the trouble upon themselves.
The family kneeling at the rail did not create the scandal. The scandal is that kneeling at the rail now has to be defended.
Why the Rail Bothers Them
The altar rail has become one of those objects that reveals more than anyone intended.
If it were just furniture, nobody would care. Bishops do not spend this much capital on meaningless wood and marble. Liturgists do not write norms against architectural trivia. Priests do not become nervous around harmless decoration.
The rail says something.
It says the sanctuary is set apart, the altar is not a table in a meeting hall, and the priest is not a facilitator of communal self-expression. It says the faithful come to receive what they cannot give themselves. It says the Eucharist descends as a gift, not as a token distributed by the assembly to itself.
More: https://open.substack.com/pub/bigmodernism/p/charlottes-bishop-michael-martin?r=2x82t4&utm_medium=ios
No comments:
Post a Comment