I was glad I was sitting down when I read about the priest in a small town in Wisconsin. His parish just finished purchasing extensive land on which to construct a new church and other buildings. The congregation had been in a celebratory mood. In the Sunday bulletin he reported that “we truly ‘christened’ our new property . . . when we carried the Blessed Sacrament in procession there. As I broke up particles of the Sacred Host and scattered them over our 37 acres . . .”
Whoa, Nellie!
I have heard the word “christen” used colloquially, outside the context of baptism (as when a ship is “christened”), but never have I heard it used in the sense of literally spreading Christ over the ground. What was this priest thinking when he performed this sacrilege?
The answer is that he may not have been thinking at all—and he may not have known any better. He may have had such a defective understanding of the Real Presence that, in his mind, he was doing nothing more than sprinkling blessed bread crumbs, an analogue to sprinkling holy water.
I hope at least some of his parishioners were aghast at what he did and, not keeping their annoyance to themselves, did him the courtesy, in private, of trying to straighten him out. If they did, and if the priest took their comments to heart, I hope he went on to learn, perhaps for the first time, the real doctrine of the Real Presence and, consequently, the gravity of what he did.
The episode reminds me of one closer to home.
Some years ago my Catholic Answers colleagues and I gave seminars at a parish located in the high desert east of Los Angeles. The pastor invited us back repeatedly over several months—perhaps because he agreed with what we said, perhaps only because our talks pleased his congregation and his congregation, in turn, was pleased with him. (Not the ideal, but good enough: a bit like the distinction between perfect contrition and imperfect contrition. The latter is sufficient for absolution in the confessional.)
The priest struck me as a thoroughly likeable and orthodox man, not particularly aggressive in promoting the faith but solid and trustworthy and certainly interested in passing on authentic teaching to his charges.
Many months later, when I next heard about him, it was from a disgruntled parishioner. It seems that one Sunday—it may have been the feast of Corpus Christi—the priest explained from the pulpit that, after the consecration, the bread and wine “represent” Christ. They are not to be understood as actually being Christ. The Church does not teach a literalistic understanding of passages such as John 6, he said.
A few shocked parishioners could not believe their ears. They stood up and actually denounced him, right during Mass. The priest was abashed. Never had anyone talked back to him before, at least in such a context.
The anger from the parishioners took him as much by surprise as his comments had taken them. After the Mass he met them in private, and they were astounded to learn that he honestly thought the Church teaches that the Real Presence is merely symbolic. He assured them that he wanted to teach as the Church taught, and he thought he was doing so, but all this time—he was no new ordinand but had been in the priesthood for years—he had been working under a basic misconception.
How did he come by it? Probably in the seminary, where, I suspect, there was a “presider” but no “priest,” a “table” but no “altar,” a “memorial” but no “sacrifice.” He could have gone through all those years of seminary training without once having heard the Church’s complete teaching about the Mass.
Do not think this is impossible. Think of all the parishes in which laymen, faithfully attending for years, never hear certain subjects mentioned: the sinfulness of contraception, the existence of hell, the reality of sin (other than “social sin”).
A trusting layman thinks he has absorbed, over time, all the chief points of his faith. In fact, whole swaths remain unmentioned. They are not denied, not pooh-poohed, not ridiculed. They just are not talked about. It is as though he is given many pieces to a jigsaw puzzle, thinking he has them all but not having been told that half are still in the box.
If this happens to laymen—and it does, as most Catholics who have visited or lived in multiple parishes know—it also can happen, and does happen, to seminarians and therefore to priests. One would like to think that every seminary prepares its students well. Some do an excellent job. Others, if pressed, would have a hard time justifying their continued existence.
Perhaps the high desert pastor attended one of the latter seminaries. I hope his deep embarrassment led him to discover, for the first time, what the Church really teaches about the Eucharist. If so, he turned out to be a better priest for having stumbled so badly in public.
This article is reprinted with permission from our friends at Catholic Answers.
