Wednesday Liturgy: Follow-up: Consecration at a Distance
ROME, DEC. 5, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university.
Two distinct themes emerged from our Nov. 21 comments on a "long distance" consecration.
Some priests mentioned their participation in papal Masses where they held up the hosts to be consecrated even though there was some distance from the altar.
The point here is not so much the physical distance, which due to the nature of some podiums can be relatively large, but the relationship which the priests holding the hosts for consecration had with the altar.
In the vast majority of cases the priests who hold the ciboria at papal Masses have some direct relationship with the altar. There is usually nobody between the priests and the concelebrants at the altar and the celebrant is aware of their presence.
If on some occasion this aspect was not observed, it was probably due either to lack of organization or inexperience in planning the logistics of papal Masses, especially in the early years of Pope John Paul II's itinerant papacy.
In the case we examined there was no such relationship between the hosts supposedly consecrated and the "altar."
An attentive reader from New Haven, Connecticut, caught a theological imprecision in an example I gave regarding the non-recognition of Mormon baptism.
He writes: "I recall reading in more than one place that belief as such, on the part of the baptizer, is not necessary to validly administer the sacrament of baptism, the dramatic formulation of this being that even an atheist may baptize. No atheist, however, believes in the Trinity; as I recall the traditional formulation, it is the atheist's intending to do what the Church does (however obscure the atheist's motivations) that makes the valid administration of the sacrament possible.
"In the cases of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, then, it is not their unbelief in the Trinity as such that renders their baptisms invalid, but rather the corollary that, given their unbelief, they do not intend as a rule to do what the Church does in baptizing. The sacrament fails from lack of intention.
"Moreover, since atheists may baptize despite being atheists, it must also be technically possible that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses may baptize as well, despite their own religious convictions, if in particular cases (for whatever reasons) they should deliberately choose to unite their intention with the intention of the Catholic Church in baptizing."
Our reader's observations are fundamentally correct regarding the distinction between belief and intention, and regarding the reasons for the non-recognition of baptisms performed within the Mormon belief system. The non-validity of these baptisms was officially declared in a very brief note signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger with the specific approval of John Paul II on June 5, 2001.
Two distinct themes emerged from our Nov. 21 comments on a "long distance" consecration.
Some priests mentioned their participation in papal Masses where they held up the hosts to be consecrated even though there was some distance from the altar.
The point here is not so much the physical distance, which due to the nature of some podiums can be relatively large, but the relationship which the priests holding the hosts for consecration had with the altar.
In the vast majority of cases the priests who hold the ciboria at papal Masses have some direct relationship with the altar. There is usually nobody between the priests and the concelebrants at the altar and the celebrant is aware of their presence.
If on some occasion this aspect was not observed, it was probably due either to lack of organization or inexperience in planning the logistics of papal Masses, especially in the early years of Pope John Paul II's itinerant papacy.
In the case we examined there was no such relationship between the hosts supposedly consecrated and the "altar."
An attentive reader from New Haven, Connecticut, caught a theological imprecision in an example I gave regarding the non-recognition of Mormon baptism.
He writes: "I recall reading in more than one place that belief as such, on the part of the baptizer, is not necessary to validly administer the sacrament of baptism, the dramatic formulation of this being that even an atheist may baptize. No atheist, however, believes in the Trinity; as I recall the traditional formulation, it is the atheist's intending to do what the Church does (however obscure the atheist's motivations) that makes the valid administration of the sacrament possible.
"In the cases of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, then, it is not their unbelief in the Trinity as such that renders their baptisms invalid, but rather the corollary that, given their unbelief, they do not intend as a rule to do what the Church does in baptizing. The sacrament fails from lack of intention.
"Moreover, since atheists may baptize despite being atheists, it must also be technically possible that Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses may baptize as well, despite their own religious convictions, if in particular cases (for whatever reasons) they should deliberately choose to unite their intention with the intention of the Catholic Church in baptizing."
Our reader's observations are fundamentally correct regarding the distinction between belief and intention, and regarding the reasons for the non-recognition of baptisms performed within the Mormon belief system. The non-validity of these baptisms was officially declared in a very brief note signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger with the specific approval of John Paul II on June 5, 2001.
posted by Chipi Buenafe at
9:49 AM
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