Author: Richard Chonak

Apologetics Corner: A note on communion in the Church

On one of the mailing lists I operate, a lady asked members to help her give some guidance to her sister who sometimes attends Lutheran services, but does not know why a Catholic should not seek to receive Holy Communion there. Here’s what I wrote:

The Holy Eucharist is at the heart of the Church. It is, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, the “source and summit” of Christian life. It’s the most important act of Christian life — to be present at Holy Mass where our Lord comes in the Sacrament of the Eucharist; and also to receive Him in the Sacrament.
The Eucharist is what gives unity to the Catholic Church. Let me explain this for a minute.
The Church exists in dioceses all over the world, and they form one fellowship, one community. They are one in faith and one in the sacraments. That is: a Catholic from one diocese is free to receive the sacraments in any other Catholic diocese. This is not something completely automatic. It happens because the bishop of your diocese and the bishops of all the other dioceses, including the Pope in Rome, all agree to be in one community together.
The theological word for this agreement is: being in communion. These bishops all agree that they are willing to celebrate Mass together, and share the sacraments together. The highest degree possible of Church unity is in celebrating the Eucharist together. So in the Catholic Church, we hold the same Catholic Faith together, and we share the seven Sacraments, including the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood. Unity in Faith and unity in the Sacraments go together.
Sadly, there are divisions among Christians; there are Christians who do not hold or teach all the doctrines of the Faith that the Catholic Church holds and teaches, and they do not fully recognize the authority that God entrusts to the Catholic Church. They are not in agreement with the Catholic Church on these very important matters, so we have to acknowledge that full unity in faith does not exist yet. Without unity in faith, sacramental sharing would be a pretense: it would portray a unity that really does not exist yet.
That Christians are disunited and cannot share the Eucharist and the other sacraments is a cause of pain to us and to other Christians. We should let that pain motivate us in our efforts to bring the Christian communities together in one faith and one love, before one Holy Table of the Lord. The Church works to increase unity by engaging in dialogue with representatives of the other Christian communities and churches. When unity in faith is achieved, then full unity in sacramental sharing will follow.

Add your own arguments in the comments.

Give (modified) thanks for Cornell’s GM researchers

If you think the abbreviation “GM” stands for a car company, well, that’s so 20th Century of you. We’re talking about genetic modification of foods here.
I’ve been unenthusiastic about the genetics trend in agriculture for a while. Do we want Big Agribusiness companies such as Monsanto to take the plants God invented, making slight modifications, and turn them into patented products to sell back to the very countries — often poor countries — in which the plants were found in the first place? Who has the right to patent a genome in the first place?
These products offer some superior characteristics, but if adopted, they seem to have a downside: they add to the pressure against more varied agriculture in favor of large-scale single-crop farming: a practice that can drive out local varieties, reduce biological diversity, and make local self-sufficiency in food production impossible. That sounds like a risky change. Sometimes these companies have even planned to sell seeds “programmed” to germinate once and produce sterile offspring; this would ensure that farmers cannot gather usable seed from the crops they raise. These practices are what give the “globalization” phenomenon a bad name.
Today’s news, though, is not like that. Scientists at Cornell have announced a hardier strain of rice — holding up better against salt water, cold, and drought. And here’s the good-news part of the story: instead of licensing the technique and turning it into a cash cow, they have announced they intend to release it for free use.

The Cornell researchers are patenting the new rice strain, but Garg said they will then release it for general use.
“We want to put this into the public domain so people everywhere can use it,” he said.

Bravo!

The news has reached America: Medjugorje promoter Jozo Zovko, OFM, suspended in abuse case

And it only took 13 years for church officials in the U.S. to notice.
Once upon a time in the land of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in a peaceful little town called Medjugorje (where they manufactured hand grenades during the recent war), some teenage would-be seers claimed that Our Lady said — among many other things — that their own parish priest Jozo Zovko, OFM, was already a saint.
An endorsement like that is pretty good at boosting your reputation as a writer, speaker, and retreat master. Probably Fr. Zovko’s high point came when Martin Sheen portrayed him in the Medjugorje movie. I know: Sheen’s been involved with as many religious bombs as Osama, so maybe that’s not much of a high point.
Later on, the news about Fr. Zovko was not quite so good: in 1989 his faculties to hear confessions were lifted after several women pilgrims accused him of sexual assault. He persisted in hearing confessions and, it appears, ended up suspended. Medjugorje supporters engaged in some obfuscation and some full-strength denial about it all, but finally in 2002 the news has reached America through official channels: as the WashPost reports, this week the Archdiocese of Washington scotched Fr. Zovko’s plan to speak at the National Shrine after getting official word of the suspension from the Diocese of Mostar.
The denial is pretty thick, though: a priest who recently hosted a Zovko event told the Boston Herald that “he believed Zovko’s suspension only prevented him from public prayer within Bosnia.” I guess when somebody does a really good job of “tickling your ears” (2 Tim. 4:3), it’s hard to give it up.

I’m off to the Holy City

Pittsburgh, that is. A Capuchin friend is taking his permanent vows as a friar there on Saturday, so join me in praying for the Brothers. Since their first profession of vows in ’99, they’ve been pursuing their studies in Washington and in due course, they’ll make fine ministers of the Gospel.
Update: The profession ceremony Saturday was a beautiful event which I will always remember. For one thing, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard tenor sax as a liturgical music instrument. I had no idea Kenny G. was an influence on Franciscanism. Sigh.