Layer upon layer of Eucharistic practice was constructed over the millennia as protection against the slightest attenuation of Catholic doctrine regarding the Eucharist. For over sixty years, it has been breached.
For all its good intentions, the grand project of Eucharistic Revival is barely limping to its finish line. Applause is in order, for at least it noticed a precipitous loss of faith in the central mystery of Catholicism. But its cure was carefully wrapped in the naïve gauze that created the fatal lapse in the first place. Look at its official website: a swirl of puerile slogans, kindergarten art, and a breathtaking lack of seriousness.
But such grave breaches of Catholic Faith deserve the thunderbolts the likes of Blessed Pius IX’s Quanta Cura and The Syllabus of Errors, not petite entreaties couched in the porous language that delivered us to these desperate straits.
But that seems to be a bridge too far. The shepherds seem to be strapped into a straitjacket created by the naivete (or malice) of Important Theologians of the past half century. One of their more ambitious projects was retooling the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. This was then accompanied by a massive dismantling of the whole architectonic devotional ensemble which promoted piety and protected its doctrinal purity.
More serious was the whole mood created by this theological nomenklatura. By their unchallenged fiat, error was declared to be an antediluvian cul de sac. With priggish insouciance, error was now clothed in the gentler philosophical category of difference, which was to stand proudly along truth without prejudice. (Oh, you say, whiffs of Derrida and Foucault. And you would be correct.) Standards were to be considered atavistic, and only reverent “listening” was to stand in its place.
Those who govern the Church found themselves paralyzed. Who were they to stifle the “blowing of the spirit”? Strangely, they had no qualms in dragging out the old inquisitorial machinery to discipline those standing in the way of the “spirit blowing.”
But if a carte blanche now reigned, couldn’t it apply to those opposed to the ideology of the “spirit blowing where it will”? Clearly not. “Listening” would only be deigned to those whom the ruling class found worthy of being listening to.
Which brings us to Chicago—and its prince. With Solomonic certitude, he recently mandated new and inflexible rules regarding the reception of Holy Communion.
Read the rest: https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/chicago-where-eucharistic-revival-goes-to-die
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