Earlier this month, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops asked lay Catholics on Facebook for advice following the release of a troubling Pew Research survey that found only 3 in 10 Catholics actually believe the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus Christ during Mass.
The laity overwhelmingly responded by calling on the USCCB to reinstitute traditional liturgical practices.
More than 1,100 comments and hundreds more “likes” revealed Catholics want bishops to combat unbelief in the Real Presence by, among other things, giving communion on the tongue, saying Mass ad orientem, moving tabernacles to the center of the church, restoring Latin chant, and scaling back the role of extraordinary Eucharistic ministers.
Fr. Richard Heilman of Wisconsin wrote that “banal, casual, modernized and secularized liturgy that no longer lifts the soul to God” is to blame for lack of belief in transubstantiation. Fr. Heilman runs the Roman Catholic Man blog.
One commentator, Tim Kline, who is not Catholic but said he is “sympathetic” to it, admonished the bishops for allowing priests who “scandalize the church” to administer communion. He also criticized them for letting “pro-choice politicians” and unrepentant sinners receive it. Not stopping these occurrences, Kline said, is to tell the world that the Eucharist is meaningless. “Start treating it like you believe it is the Real Presence,” he said.
Kline’s comment went viral with help from several prominent Catholic writers.
The Pew Research survey found that among weekly Mass-attending Catholics only 63 percent of them believe in transubstantiation, meaning 37 percent of weekly Church goers don’t believe in the real presence. Among the 37 percent who don’t believe in transubstantiation, 23 percent don’t know what the Church teaches on it and 14 percent do know but reject it.
Full story at LifeSiteNews.
Adoro Te Devote
(Hidden God)
Adoro te devote, laetens Deitas, que sub his figuris vere latitas; tibe se cor meaum totum suibicit quia contemplans totum deficit. Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur, sed auditur solo tuto creditur; Credo quidquid ducit Dei Filius; nil hoc verbo Veritatis verius. ……………………………………………………….
,
St. Thomas Aquinas
Bring back the Hidden God — not that He ever left. Too many just put him in the closet.
I made a couple of mistakes, but you can look it up on line and see the beauty of it all in Latin AND English.
Anne TE– LOVE the beautiful Latin hymn, “Adoro Te Devote,” by St. Thomas Aquinas! Don’t worry about your mistakes! How I wish our Church clerics– and Pope!– would agree with what this article is saying! Too many embrace wrongful worldly beliefs and ways– and are disobedient to Christ, and refuse to accept the religious discipline He calls them to! It seems the only discipline they accept, these days– is in sports!– but not in religion!
As our Catechism states– it takes the Gift of Faith to believe in the “Hidden God” — the Real Presence, in the Blessed Sacrament!
Ann TE, let me be a bit more useful to the readers: adore you devoutly, O Godhead hid let many islands, which are truly art within the forms before me; you living heart would mean that the whole suibicit faints and fails. Sight, touch, taste, but to listen to discern; I believe all the Son of God leads; Nothing for truth.
My favorite modern English translation is in the captions on the “Adoro te devote/ Musica Catolica” website on You Tube. I cannot put in the link, but it goes likes this:
“Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,
Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,
See, Lord, at thy service low lies here a heart
Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.”
Then are the other three stanzas, all so beautiful, whether in Latin, English or Spanish.
Paragraph one says 3 in 10 [30%] believe in transubstantion. The last paragraph says 63% of weekly Mass attending Catholics believe in transubstation.
My first reaction is: which is it? Perhaps paragraph one refers to ‘all’ Catholics. A bit of clarity would help.
As to scaling back Eucharistic Ministers, perhaps I’m too practical. Do parishes have enough priests and deacons to distribute Communion. Most parishes have at most two hours between Sunday AM Masses. A tight schedule.
mike m. In regards to your “practical concerns”– We are really not a “Protestant” church, minimizing or rejecting Catholic Sacraments, and greatly minimizing clergy Holy Orders and their correct roles– while falsely uplifting untrained, un-ordained laymen to false positions in liturgical, administrative, and religious leadership roles, which are proper responsibilities of clergy. With a return to holiness, and all that this article states– many good priestly vocations would be suddenly born— and there would again be many priests, to correctly assist at Communion.
US Catholic Bishops beware! Before you start mandating the Extraordinary Form of the Mass at all parishes recognize that 1000 comments posted on Facebook may not accurately reflect the opinions of many Catholics in the USA. Instead, commission a scientific poll of US Catholics regarding any changes regarding celebration of the Mass. Previous scientific polls have found the majority of Catholics in the USA support the changes resulting from the Second Vatican Council.
Only Catholics conditioned by the post V2 era reject the TLM. The Novus Ordo was beyond the imagination of Catholics for 1,500 years and those Catholics attended Mass. The “opinions” of Novus Ordo Catholics should be no more respected than were the sensibilities of Catholics in the 1960s who were ambushed by the Novus Ordo and had it shoved down their throats. The hierarchy needs to admit to itself that the Novus Ordo was a mistake, not to mention a hermuenetic rupture. The Novus Ordo will eventually die out.
Amen
Right. The Ordinary Form will “die out.” Folks, there has been no rush among millions of Catholics worldwide to the Extraordinary Form. None. There had been an increases since 2007 after Pope Benedict’s “motu propio.” But since then, the numbers have plateued. Folks, as the Ordinary Form becomes more and more reverent thanks to priests (such as the younger ones) who are learning the TLM, there will no need for millions of Catholics worldwide to go to the old form. NONE. The Ordinary Form, reverently and devoutly offered, is the future of the Church folks.
Seriously? The majority of Catholics were not even born before the Second Vatican Council and have no frame of reference to judge anything about the Traditional Latin Mass, or what Catholic life was like before V2. The overwhelming majority of Catholics have never even attended a Traditional Latin Mass in their entire lifetimes.
Mike m: Communion under one form (which my parish does) would obviate the need for many lay minister of Holy Communion. (At daily Mass in most parishes, there are 6 people — 4-5 lay —- distributing the Blessed Sacrament, for ~ 50-60 people)!
Also, preaching about mortal sin, frequent Confession, the belief in the Real Presence and being in a state of grace before receiving Communion might decrease the lines of people receiving.
I think the USCCB is clueless, or doesn’t care, about the reason the pews are empty except for the decrease in the collection basket.
Right. For a lay Catholic to say publicly and seemingly without compunction that his/her spiritual shepherds (the bishops) whom God has anointed to lead his flock are “clueless, or do not care” is a gross presumption on the intent in their heart (which only God can see) and a gross unjust judgment. Believe it or not folks, this is a violation of Canon Law. Folks, everything you say, and type, will be accounted for in the dreadful Day of Judgment.
AS will every contemptible attack you have made on everyone who you disagree with on this site ..jon
Let’s see now: “…the majority of Catholics support the changes resulting from the Second Vaican Council.” So how do they show their support? By sleeping in, mowing their lawns or going to the beach (or to work) on the mandated days for Mass attendance. I’m not sure of the actual percentages (and they vary from poll to poll) but Mass attendance in the United States has dropped from about 80 percent pre-Vatican II to somewhere near 30 percent since that august gathering. That’s quite a show of enthusiasm for the Mass of Paul VI, no? When I attend the Novo Ordo Mass I am always jarred when the celebrant says — after the consecration! — “when we eat this bread” and then goes on to say “when we celebrate this memorial…” Another question: Why is anyone surprised that only a minority of Catholics believes in the real presence? And, oh yes, why does anyone bother to get up on Sunday morning in order to listen to some awful music, some inane sermon and then line up to have some layperson put a piece of tasteless flat bread into his or her cupped hands?
yeah….asking for advice on Facebook?…is this some kind of posturing for optics? The USCCB knows very well what the issues are and straining to appear culturally relevant by using an increasingly unpopular less relevant social media platform to telegraph “hipness” is sorry indeed.
Just complete/facilitate the reversal of the liturgical “iconoclasty” borne of the 70’s that has already begun and be done with it. Honestly, this timidity is becoming tiresome.
But the laity better dang well be willing to put their money where their mouths are.
Many of the posts here are undoubtedly by “latinistas” who want the Church to return to the pre-Vatican II practices. If the Bishops were wrong at Vatican II, then many of the Church’s practices and beliefs can be called into question.
For those that prefer those rites & rituals i understand why they miss them. However, they have nothing to do with the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. A priest in a communist prison camp with a scrap of bread, no time for a real mass, & some fermented scraps of fruit by his words alone change the bread and wine into the body & blood of Jesus. The reason people do not believe is that in their lives they are only going through the motions of being catholic. They are not catholic.
Perhaps some Catholics do not believe in the “Real Presence” because other parishioners and priests live in such a manner that does not reflect the “real presence” of Jesus in their lives. Many people today are too busy trying to keep up with the Kardashians! Remember when receiving Holy Communion resulted in a “metanoia”?
Most of the traditional liturgical practices recommended by the devotees of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass are already available. Pope Benedict XVI in his Summorum Pontificum was pro-choice! That is, he permitted both forms of the Holy Mass and allowed Catholics to choose which form met their spiritual needs. He specifically stated that one form of the Mass was better than the other.