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Bird’s Eye View of the News
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Atila Sinke Guimarães
MASS, EUCHARIST & CANON MUST CHANGE - After analyzing Fr. Thomas Reese's proposals for a future liturgy on inculturation and new ministries in my last column, let me go on to look at other areas where he wants radical changes.

Regarding ecumenism in the liturgy, he proposes sharing the Eucharist with “other Christian churches.” Although he does not elaborate on the theoretical level, he gave an example. It was the Lutheran woman who in 2015 asked Francis if she could receive Communion since she was married to a Catholic. Francis told her: “Talk to the Lord and then go forward,” which is a way to tell her to follow her conscience. It was the bad advice of a progressivist Pope.

On this incident, Reese commented:

“Theologically if a couple is united in the sacrament of matrimony, how can we not allow them to be united at the Eucharist? Pastorally, the practice of barring the non-Catholic parent from Communion gives the children the impression that the Church thinks their parent is a bad person.”

These two questions have wrong presuppositions:


Fr. Thomas Reese

Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, wants more radical reforms to come into the Liturgy

  • If a couple who practice different religions is united in marriage, each of the spouses should have agreed before they marry whether they will follow their own beliefs. So the first question: “How can we not allow them to be united at the Eucharist?” is just a sentimental utterance of someone who places the human union above the integrity of the Catholic Faith.

    The answer to Reese’s question is quite simple: We can bar the Lutheran woman from receiving the Holy Eucharist because she does not believe the Sacred Host is the real Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ; instead, she considers It to be a piece of bread. Therefore, if one allows her to receive the Holy Eucharist, this person will be an accomplice to her sacrilege.

  • The second question is also superficial. Reese argued that for the sake of pedagogy – the benefit of the children – priests should allow Protestant spouses to receive the Eucharist. Again, it is a sentimental and demagogic approach to two unrelated subjects – theology and pedagogy – made by a Jesuit who does not believe in the Real Presence.
The Tridentine Mass must disappear

Next, Reese attacked the Tridentine Mass. His hatred for Pope Ratzinger was not absent in this assault. The Jesuit argued that Paul VI had intended to lay to rest the bi-millennial Latin Mass and that Benedict “took away the Bishops’ authority” by permitting the Perennial Rite to be said.

Reese declared: “It is time to return to bishops the authority over the Tridentine liturgy in their dioceses. The church needs to be clear that it wants the unreformed liturgy to disappear and will only allow it out of pastoral kindness to older people who do not understand the need for change. Children and young people should not be allowed to attend such Masses.”

Youth attending Traditional Mass

According to Reese, youth must be forbidden to attend the Traditional Mass

In other words, it was only to avoid problems with some old maniacal persons – the traditionalists – that the Conciliar Church have allowed them to attend the Latin Mass. But it is clear that it wants the death of that Mass. For Reese, the Latin Mass should be buried with those maniacs as they die off…

The last proposal – “children and young people should not be allowed to attend such Masses” – has caused a lot of turmoil among traditionalist ladies. They consider Reese to be a cruel monster because of these words. I also think that he is a monster, not because of this statement but because he is a progressivist. This is the substance of his monstrosity. His attack against children and youth is just a deplorable accident of his bad doctrine.

Reese’s hatred for Benedict and his Summorum Pontificum made me laugh. He presents Ratzinger as a symbol of conservatism. In his fury he forgot that the German theologian holds the same idea of the Tridentine Mass that Reese has: It is a dead liturgy.

Also the permission for the Tridentine Mass given by Ratzinger was nothing but a ruse, a provisional act of tolerance to avoid a schism (here, here and here).

So, if the Jesuit would just calm down a little, he would see that Benedict’s maneuver was a necessary component to advance their common progressivist cause…

A non-objective Jesuit, a progressivist who hammering a "conservative" Ratzinger misses the nail and hits his own finger, a man not far from hysteria in his feminine phobias: It was these blatant contradictions that made me laugh.

The Eucharist

Reese, then, turned to the Eucharist. He stated:

“More important than the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ is the transformation of the community into the body of Christ so we can live out the covenant we have through Christ.”

Luther giving communion

The Jesuit's concept of Eucharist is similar to Luther's - above, he is shown giving communion

The Jesuit here slipped into heresy, I think. Indeed, the “transformation of the community into the body of Christ” is a mystical reality; the transformation of the bread and wine in the Body and Blood of Christ is an objective reality. This mystical reality sometimes does happen, sometimes it does not. Its accomplishment relies upon the spiritual progress of those present. So then, supposing that all the progressivists attending Mass were in an elevated spiritual state and that this mystical reality were present at every Mass – as Reese wrongly supposes – it still would not be comparable to the objective reality of the Transubstantiation.

By stating that the mystical reality is more important than the Real Presence, the Jesuit denies the dogma and falls flat into heresy. He seems to imagine, like Luther, that the Eucharist is just a symbol more tenuous than the presence of the members of the community at “the banquet.”

This would be his “renewed understanding of the Eucharist.”

New Canons for the Mass

The author goes on to propose that the Church should have as many different "Eucharistic prayers" – the Canon of the Mass – as the different themes require, for example: "concern for the poor, justice, peace, healing and the environment."

That is, there would no longer be a fixed formula for the Transubstantiation, but there would be variable formulæ according to the circumstances. There is not any provision on what authority – the Vatican, the Bishops’ Conferences, the local Dioceses – should establish these formulæ. This absence lets me suppose that the Jesuit imagines that each priest may improvise a formula at will when a new circumstance appears.

In other words, it would signify the end of the Catholic notion of Eucharist. Again, this new eucharist corresponds to the Protestant idea of communion, which is not the Real Presence, but a simple symbolic memorial of Christ.

These are, in my opinion, the most relevant points of Reese’s suggestions for a new liturgical reform.

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