The “Banquet Celebration” Mass is the Tail Wagging the Kasper Dog

Yesterday, I posted a longish post that got into the problem I see with some of the voices of the recent Synod of Bishops. Particularly, those who seem so concerned with providing a path to Holy Communion for divorced and remarried couples as well as some that wanted to figure out how to get so-called same sex couples to be able to approach Holy Communion. They never once mentioned, that I can find anywhere, how to make it easier for frauds, cheats, idolators, those who withhold the wages of workers, or anyone else to go to communion. Instead, as I mentioned there: they seem to be eroding the purpose of amendment for these select few, the divorced and remarried and so-called same sex couples. But why? Step back from the table for a moment, put down the recordings of “Gather,” and let’s all reconsider why there is such a hyper-focus on making a new standard of repentance for these people but not the others. Why is the only concern whether they can go to Communion?

In the Time Before Felt Banners

Fifty years ago, prior to the reforms, and before the time of clown masses, felt banners, or gym masses, I have long heard reported from priests and folks that lived then that it was common for half the church to go to Communion, and the other half to stay in the pew. It was not out of the ordinary for religious, such as nuns, to receive once a month. People had a variety of reasons for not receiving at every Mass. Perhaps they wanted to get to confession. Perhaps they weren’t sure of their worthiness, and decided it better to make a spiritual communion instead. Perhaps they weren’t able because they were in an irregular marriage. Whatever the reason, what I have been told is that nobody thought twice about it. It was normal for there to be people scattered around in the pews at Communion.

You get the sense that nobody in those times would be shocked if only a couple people went to Communion. Get the picture? It just wasn’t out of the ordinary to have people stay in the pew because of some reservation about their worthiness to receive Holy Communion.

Then the “banquet celebration” happened.

For whatever else people think of the “all are welcome” comment, it was not Pope Francis that applied it to reception of the Blessed Sacrament. That happened in the wake of Vatican II. Mass was transformed into a “banquet”, “table”, “celebration”, “supper”, or any other inane word to make it sound like a fast food drive through had more prestige. Add in the admonishments of priests that people should “follow their consciences” to determine if they should join the celebration of community and receive the symbol of community, and before you know it, everyone was going to Communion. Worse, they were grabbing it with their own hands.

Today, look at the typical American Mass, and EVERYONE, even the non-Catholics approach the Holy Mysteries. In fact, because we have made pseudo-praxis that people who are not receiving Communion are supposed to still approach the priest (or ill-advised so-called extraordinary ministers) at Communion and cross their arms over their chest (which happens to be the normal way to receive the Holy Mysteries in Eastern Churches/rites), the force of convention now is that there is something wrong with the people who do not approach and stay in the pew. If you stay in the pew, you are looked at askance — some say stigmatized.

The contrast is very important. It is this contrast that drives an important emotion being exploited by the likes of the Kasper-type argument:  to them, they must make it seem OK for these people to receive because they are already walking up to approach. It has been turned into a stigma to stay in the pew.

That’s the rub! Do you see it? The imputed motions of the people, even though misguided and wrong, are driving the top of the Church- the tail is wagging the dog for Kasper.

Kasper’s argument would mean nothing fifty years ago because people would scoff at him and say, “let them stay in the pew with the other half of the church that stays there!”  In fact, I know that is how it would work. Over the years, at a few parishes, I’ve seen couples in irregular marriages that stayed in the pew Mass after Mass, year in and year out. I never thought they were stigma. They came to Mass, they had devotions, and they never said the Church has to change to accommodate them.

This concept of the tail wagging the dog, however, was embedded in the long citation I gave from Bishop Graber’s book. He predicted Kasper to a tee. He predicted that popular sentiment would support a Kasper-like whiny way to abrogate tenets. The tail wagging the dog was part of the Masonic publication cite:

whereas from now on the directions will proceed from the base of the pyramid upwards as in any democracy; the gradual disappearance of the ontological and metaphysical character of the sacraments and then the subsequent death of confession now that sin in our days has become a completely anachronistic concept

[…]

The Church did not foresee that it would be contested in this way and it is no longer anything like prepared to absorb and assimilate this revolutionary spirit . . . It is not the scaffold that is awaiting the Pope, it is the rise of the local Churches organizing themselves democratically, rejecting the dividing-line between clergy and laymen, creating their own dogma and living in complete autonomy of Rome.

Graber, Athanasius and the Church of Our Time, quoting the Paris-based Journal of the Grand Orient Freemason Lodge of France, L’Humanisme (May/October volume, 1968).

So you see the motion the enemy has attempted here:  they made the clamor for everyone to approach for Communion. And now they take that expectation and cram it back into Rome seeking to change the faith based on the popular trends.

The pride of the demons to state “the Church did not foresee that it would be contested this way…”   That is funny to me. It’s as if they think they were able to outsmart Jesus. Moreover, it’s as if they think the Church has never dealt with Athanasius or other heresiarchs that tried to have error justify error. The African bishops as well others apparently don’t have the problems at the base of the pyramid that American and European Churches have. They said as much in the Synod.

The remedy to this is what I’ve heard for decades, in fact, all my life:  don’t go to Communion if you aren’t worthy. Kasper can’t see past the survey results, and the popular tide, however. If everyone walks up to receive, then he wants to make a way for them all to receive. It is the democratization predicted in the citation above. It is the populist tail wagging the cardinal dog.

For all the wheel spinning on the “family” and having a Synod on the family, it should be embarrassing to Kasper and the others that they spent their time to shine discussing such a boring topic as divorced and remarried individuals and same sex couples when there are far greater challenges for families today, especially families that are not divorced and are trying to raise their children in a Church where a good portion of catechism seems to have more to do with environmental Gaia worship, multiculturalism, and profane political topics and not enough to do with purpose of amendment, worthy reception of sacraments, and christian perfection.

Maybe even a remedial course in grace.

That would have been an interesting Synod!

This article, The “Banquet Celebration” Mass is the Tail Wagging the Kasper Dog is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
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