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Holy Communion at a High Mass in the Domincan Rite at Oxford's Blackfriars |
Sometimes people like to complain about problems but do not, really, want to solve them. If you offer a solution, they are uninterested, or even angry. The problem is important to them. It may even be a way for them to get something they want: perhaps to extract a concession from someone. So I ask: does anyone (anyone in authority) actually want to solve the problem of sacrilegious communions?
Pope John Paul II pointed out the problem way back in 1980
(Dominicae Cenae):
Sometimes, indeed quite frequently, everybody
participating in the eucharistic assembly goes to Communion; and on some such
occasions, as experienced pastors confirm, there has not been due care to
approach the sacrament of Penance so as to purify one’s conscience.
The situation is now vastly worse than in 1980. Many go without real reflection. Others, who might be thinking about how they ought to go to Confession first, find it embarrassing or even physically awkward to avoid going up too. It has become a common attitude that if you don't go to Communion, you've not been to Mass properly: you've not fulfilled your obligation. And all this is to say nothing of the problem of those who feel excluded, or the priests who feel they need to exclude them, because of notorious public sin, a problem which is the root of the greatest crisis in the Church, according to some, since Arianism, and which is threatening to cause a schism.