Down yonder (keep scrolling), a reader writes:
Do you really believe that you are sufficiently informed on the specifics of this matter to make such an unequivocal determination of the priests guilt?
Have you communicated with the Pastor to determine what exactly he has done? Or with the parents of the children?
I’m just wondering, because I didn’t realize that "Canon Law" provided for such judgements as you have made.
If you go back and read the original post, you’ll see that I quite carefully noted that I’m relying on a press report and that the press may have gotten it wrong. Consequently, I’m not making unequivocal determinations regarding anybody’s guilt. I’m speaking to whether the pastor’s actions were lawful if the press report is accurate.
The reader continues:
Regarding some of your points specifically.
Canon 213: The spiritual goods of the church to which they are entitled are all available to them at mass. It does not say they are entitled to spiritual goods in the form of regular religious education classes.
This interpetation of the canon is not accurate. It is patently untrue that "all" the spiritual goods referred to in the canon are available at Mass since the canon expressly refers to "the sacraments" (plural). This means all the sacraments, and you can’t get all the sacraments at Mass. Such a reductionistic reading of the canon is simply wrong.
Neither can the faithful’s right to receiving goods "from the word of God" limited to what happens in Mass. It also includes, as later canons spell out–the duty of pastors to assist with the catechetical preparation of children to receive the sacraments.
Canon 843: You conveniently ignore the "proper disposition" which would include regular mass attendance.
I in no way ignore this. I don’t mention it because this clause is not germane to the legal issue being discussed. Some have tried to make it relevant by arguing that you have to fulfill your Sunday obligation to be properly disposed to receive Communion but this fails because the mechanism by which failure to fulfill Sunday obligation results in lack of proper disposition is because it results in folks being in mortal sin.
Only that doesn’t happen in this case because any child whose parents refuse to take him to Mass has a valid excuse for missing Mass and thus is not in mortal sin. (At least not on that ground alone.)
Further, as I have pointed out elsewhere, frequent attendance at a Mass is simply not required for one to be properly disposed to receive Communion. If you have people who live up in the hills, with only one parish within driving distance, and the diocese only sends around a priest every two months to say Mass for them then they do not thereby lose the proper dispositions needed to receive Communion when it is offered at a Mass. Same goes for shut-ins who are too physicaly infirm to go to Mass. And same thing goes for those who can’t get to Mass on their own (e.g., kids) and who don’t have someone who is willing to take them (as in this case).
Canon 912: There is no evidence that anyone is being denied Holy Communion.
Please go read the news article in question. It makes it quite clear that the pastor is preventing the kids from attending the catechetical classes needed for the children to make their First Holy Communion. They are thereby being denied Communion by denying them the prerequisites for Communion.
Canon 913: The fact that they do not attend regular mass is proof that they do not have careful preparation.
No it is not. Canon 18 expressly states that laws restricting the exercise of a right must be given a strict interpretation.
Applying this to the requirements for the exercise of the right to receive Communion requires one to take a strict understanding of the preparation that is necessary: It is that catechetical preparation needed for initiation into the Eucharist, not attending Mass each week–or even attending Mass frequently.Otherwise the people living up in the hills who don’t have regular access to Mass would never be able to get any of their children initiated into the Eucharist.
Canon 18 requires one to give these canons a strict interpreatation favoring the right of the child to both the catechesis and the reception of the Eucharist.
Since you seem to lean heavily on the assumption that much of the detriment here is sacramental preparation, which I don’t believe it is all about, what would you have him do?
I would have him encourage the parents to engage in regular Mass attendance in ways that do not involve obstructing the child’s right to catechesis or the Eucharist. For example: Making personal calls on them to urge them to attend Mass more frequently and explaining how important it is, both for themselves and for their children. If there are too many such parents, he should enlist others to aid in the effort.
Should he acknowledge their right to attend the classes and ignore that their mass attendence is insufficient to qualify them for receiving the sacrament due to proper disposition, and careful preparation?
No, because that’s not what’s going on here. The children’s Mass attendance is not insufficient to qualify them from receiving the sacrament, either on grounds of proper disposition or careful preparation. He therefore does not need to ignore this fact because it is not a fact.
What is a fact is that the child has a right to both catechesis and, following that, the Eucharist, in a timely manner that cannot be obstructed because of the delinquency of his parents.
Jimmy, I mean no disrespect to several of those posting here, but, well, I’ll put it this way: you are much more patient in correcting people who CAN’T OR WON’T READ what you actually wrote, than many of us would be. I never (well, almost never) correct an allegation against my work that is SO OBVIOUSLY wrong–not merely a disagreement, of course, but instead something completely wrong. One’s life would, I fear, given the rules of the Net, dissolve into doing nothing else but trying to fix such expressions. Anyway, I imagine, that’s one of the many reasons why you’re a saint, and I’m not.
Not to hijack, because I think this is related a tiny bit, but did anyone else read the post recently about babies being denied baptism because the parents fail to convince the priest that they will raise the kid Catholic? (Or the parents don’t make an official promise, or whatever that was). Did anyone else see red flags there? The graces given at baptism are God’s to give and those are graces the child needs. Who knows, the grace might give the kid some impetus to learn more about the faith he/she was baptized in, especially once they know they were baptized and in which Church. I don’t think this grace should be withheld to anyone on such an external factor that the kid can’t help, as a parent’s promise, and that factor is an external factor to the need for that grace.
Responding to Lurker: Baptism may, by Church law, never be denied. However, it may be delayed, even indefinitely, until the pastor has a well founded hope that the child will be raised in the faith. At infant baptism, the parents and godparents ‘stand in’ for the child, pledging that they will raise the child to keep the law of Christ and his Church. If the parents and godparents are unwilling to take on this responsibility, then baptism should be dealyed.
We had a situation in my hometown where two gay ‘parents’ wanted to have ‘their’ child baptized and it was allowed. They said they’d raise it Catholic. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Any thouhgts, anyone?
That’s exactly the same thing as denying it, though–delaying baptism indefinitely based solely on a promise that the priest never gets (from godparents and parents), and such a promise is external to the child’s need for that grace. Thanks for trying to explain though.
I’m hardly an expert like Jimmy is, but I seem to recall that the legal conditions for infant baptism include a “founded hope” that the child will be raise Catholic — not just that his caregivers say they’ll raise him Catholic.
Ordinarily I think you have to give people the benefit of the doubt when they say this, but in the case of a child being raised by a gay “couple” it seems to me that highly questionable whether one could possibly have such a “founded hope” under such circumstances.
That’s correct, regarding baptism.
And I simply don’t buy that parents have a right to demand catechesis when they’re working at cross-purposes with it.
Jimmy’s interpretation of the canons is plausible. But I don’t think one should assert that it’s obviously correct, in light of the (I would say, supreme, though not exclusive) importance of Mass attendance as part of religious education.
(Note that if the parents can’t get the kids to Mass, that’s not the same situation – they’re not sending a message that’s so strongly at odds with what the catechists would be trying to do.)
… That said, however, I think there’s a better solution – better than either simply telling the family that the kids can’t take CCD and recieve the sacraments till the parents bring them to Mass, or simply accepting them into CCD and giving them the sacraments while doing nothing more than (possibly inefficaciously) exhorting the parents to come to Mass.
Jimmy, would you please address my concern with baptism? I don’t want to hijack your topic anymore but I would like to understand this if I’m missing something. I’d need to know why these two scenarios are different:
Scenario 1: You can’t hold something against a kid for not going to Mass; they can’t control where their parents take them.
Seemingly inconsistent Scenario 2: You can deny baptism to an innocent infant, because of the parents’ irresponsibility. Whether the infant needs that grace or not, no deal, because of the parents. This seems close to treating kids as “property”, not someone who’s entitled to the grace God wants to give them.
I’d love to work this out with someone who could possibly make sense to me. I do have a sister who left the Church, once and for all, over a priest’s refusal to baptize her “mistake” daughter. She was a sister we adopted when she was 12 and I was 8, and she was raised Catholic while she was with us. But you see the harm that was done, and I think this “rule” is at least partly to blame for that. I maintain that it wasn’t right for her to leave the Church over this but I can see how she was harmed and hurt by it. She knew her daughter had a right to this grace, no matter what she did herself. She knew it was important, and baptized the girl herself.
Thanks for listening.
P.S.
In Scenario 1, of course you want someone to be properly ready to receive communion. I’m not questioning that. Whether they go to Church has nothing to do with whether they’re in a state of mortal sin. The focus is doing everything you can to get the kid this Sacrament and have the kid prepared (or it should be), because of course, they deserve to have what God wants to give them.
In Scenario 2, that doesn’t apply. We don’t get babies “ready” for baptism. They’re incapable. We baptize them anyway and take this “promise to raise them Catholic” the parents and godparents make, wrongly in my opinion, as something relevant. Their parents, for all we know, could be very lukewarm types who show up every Sunday just to be seen. We’ll baptize their kids though. It sounds like the Church says, “But forget about the innocents who need that grace who have equally irresponsible parents. We just want that promise, a reason to hope.” Who’s to say what a reason to hope is, though? Especially when the workings of grace are incomprehensible?
Not a flame, I promise.
Jimmy,
I won’t attempt to debate canon law with you, because I’m totally unqualified. The objection I raise is purely a logically one which you or one of readers may be able to address.
– The children regardless of the CCD participation were not eligible to receive the Eucharist before this decision. You didn’t argue, and I don’t believe you are arguing that the children that were attending CCD instruction were being denied their rights to the Eucharist. Nor do I believe that your argument was that the children became entitled to the Eucharist because of a chronological marker.
– So, there is something canonically allowing the priest to deny all of the children, mass attending or otherwise, the Eucharist outside of some chronological milestone.
– Hence in my mind, the possibility exists that this condition for denial is and would remain present in the children regardless of their being allowed to continue classroom catechetical instruction. This would seem to me to allow prudential judgement.
– I don’t know of any requirement that catechetical instruction must be done in a classroom.
At least for me, this is the objection that is keeping me from agreeing with you.
As the author of that allow me to respond. I did not mean for any of those comments to be direct or complete rebuttals to your determination. Rather only other factors which deserve attention.
Your very lame attempt to hide behind the “if the article is correct” shield is shameful. You made very serious charges which completely overshadowed any “if this is true” aspect. And you further insult by assuming that I did not see your minor caveat. I was well aware of it and found it quite insufficient for the charges you were making.
You should have FIRST gathered enough details to where you could say you believe the article or not. Then you could proceed to cast a judgement based on that information. Its completely irresponsible and uncharitable. Whatever the priest may have done wrong was no excuse for you to go spreading further allegations without getting sufficient information.
It is possible that you are absolutely correct in your entire post. But you did not offer any evidence of your own. You have a duty to be more than just “correct”. I think your readers deserve and need more than for you to “pile on” against this priest without stepping back to understand the full circumstances and not simply ASSUMING a news story is true.
Incidentally, I happened to catch your exchange with Greg Popcack at HMS Blog. Your “If the article is correct” caveat is noticebly absent (not merely understated).
I appreciate the thoughtful response to my recent post on the New York pastor’s actions. I’m afraid that the analysis stands, though. The priest is clearly violating the rights of the children in his parish
Since you’ve dropped the caveat, one can only assume that you’ve since analyzed all the facts independently and still determine that he is wrong.
Chris-2-4: Two points–
First, the way the blogosphere operates commonly involves commentary on news stories of which the blogger does not have independent knowledge. It simply is not possible for a blogger to conduct an independent investigation of news stories and manage to comment on them in a timely manner (i.e., while they are still in the news).
Consequently, news item commentary posts are *ALL* to be understood as dependent on the accuracy of the original press story.
They therefore have an intrinsic element of qualification to them (i.e., “if this story is correct . . . “). This is standard comment methodolgy in the blogosphere.
I am surprised that you do not appear to be aware of this. If you find that it interferes overly much with your ability to derive value from reading blogs then I see little alternative but that you stop reading them. The nature of blog commentary certainly isn’t going to change.
Conscientious bloggers try to note explicitly the qualification that their comments are contingent on the accuracy of the story on which they are commenting, but we are only human and sometimes we forget to do so (as I did when writing to Greg Popcak). Such slips are also par for the course in the blogosphere, just as typos and grammatical mistakes are.
Second, I am surprised by the tone that you take in the above posts. I have been favorably impressed by your comments up to now, but as of this point consider yourself on notice that you are in proximity of a RULE 1 violation.
Chill, dude. ‘Kay?
I regret that you may have understood my comments to be rude. (How’s that for a politician’s apology)
I guess I just disagree about the nature of blogs and this blog in particular. I feel they/it has the potential to be more than just a commentary on unverified source material. I think it COULD be place where people get a deeper look than just assuming stories are accurate.
Obviously it’s your blog and you are free to do what you like with it, but I was just really surprised to see what seems like a rush to judgement.
While I still believe you were too quick to “accuse” and the priest should have been given a little more of the benefit of the doubt, I do apologize sincerly for the tone I took myself. In my zeal to encourage you to be more charitable, I may have been less so myself.