SNUBBED AT THE ALTAR: SINNERS BANNED FROM CATHOLIC COMMUNION
THE RULES
Roman Catholicism says the Blessed Eucharist or the Mass is an act of worship
wherein the bread and wine are turned by the priest, who uses the power of God,
into the body and blood of Jesus Christ who is true God and true man.
The Christians forbid notorious sinners to come to the Lord’s Table for Holy
Communion. They are barred. And the Church bars them as in asks them to bar
themselves. This may be presented as recognising that a person has barred
themselves. So they are stealing something, insulting the
loyal members, condoning hypocrisy and mocking God and following a
personalised view of God to suit themselves should they take
communion. They may talk about being inclusive but they mean
they are being inclusive towards themselves. Real inclusion
means respecting the rules of the religion instead of including
yourself in it when you don't belong.
For Catholics the notorious sinners are:
People who live together in a state of fornication - whether gay or straight -
are barred.
People who divorce their spouses and remarry other people.
Those Catholics who have married outside the Church say in register office or in
a Mosque or in a same-sex marriage.
Heretics who are not ashamed to let the world know what they are.
Abortionists.
Pro-choice politicians and activists.
LGBT activists.
Priests who left the ministry without permission.
Protestants - barred principally for disagreeing with the Church though they are
considered to belong to the Catholic Church in the sense that their baptism gave
them Church membership.
And many more.
Those who have some illness that prevents them receiving reverently are denied communion. Nobody cares that the person could be too sick to understand and dies feeling rejected.
If you have some reason why you committed any of the above sins without full consent you are regarded as fit for going to communion but are warned to stay away even then to avoid giving the impression that the Church is blessing your sin by giving communion.
The Bible has Paul saying that whoever eats the bread and drinks the cup
without recognising the body and blood of the Lord eats and drinks judgement to
himself or herself. They are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
Patrick Madrid in Where Does it say that in the Bible? page 113 states that
being guilty of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus is a polite way of saying
you murdered him. The idea is that since Jesus had to die to pay for our sins
then sin is always murder.
The Catholic Church tells such people that they must not come to communion.
People have been turned away from the altar for selling contraceptives and for
campaigning for abortion. Most priests will give communion and meet with persons
later to tell them to stay in their seats from now on. Many will bluntly refuse
to give communion and make a scene. As those priests tend to be bullied and
severely condemned on the radio and the internet and in the papers their numbers
are diminishing. They only let notorious sinners have communion because they are
afraid to refuse and not because they think they should.
The Church says that public sinners must be refused communion. It is referring
to cases where the person only or mainly takes communion to set an example for
others. It abets scandal or bad or sinful example. A public sinner is a person
whose sin is quite public and made clearly and well known. For example, if a
person tells the priest just before Mass that she is living in a sexual
relationship and doesn't believe in marriage and he knows her sin is public he
is obligated to refuse her communion.
An example of public sinners would be LGBT activists who go to communion to
encourage people to scoff at and disobey Church teaching against LGBT activism
and gay rights.
THE BIBLE - THE BOOK GOD WROTE - SAYS
The Bible directs that sinners are not allowed to take communion and that those
who do, eat and drink condemnation to themselves for they are profaning the
Lord’s body and blood (1 Corinthians 11). It does God no harm to let them eat
him. If you take the sacrament of confirmation in a state of serious sin it will
not affect you and the grace it gives will not be conferred until you repent. It
should be the same with the Eucharist. To bar anybody from communion is wrong.
The Catholic Church has no right to call itself Catholic and the true Catholic
Church for it is not catholic, that is universal, that is for all people.
DID JESUS GIVE SACRILEGIOUS COMMUNION?
Matthew 26 indicates that Judas received bread and wine at the last supper.
Lukesays that after Jesus said the cup was his blood and invited all to partake
he said yet behold, the hand that betrayeth me is with me on the table. (Luke
21:21). So Judas was there and may have got communion. Jesus certainly invited
him to take it but if he did is not known.
The Bible mentions Judas being given some bread by Jesus and told to go and
betray him - this could be communion assuming that the last supper really was a
communion service.
CANON LAW SAYS
The 1917 Canon Law decreed,
Can 855 §1. Arcendi sunt ab Eucharistia publice indigni, quales sunt
excommunicati, interdicti manifestoque infames, nisi de eorum poenitentia et
emendatione constet et publico scandalo prius satisfecerint.
§2. Occultos vero peccatores, si occulte petant et eos non emendatos agnoverit,
minister repellat; non autem, si publice petant et sine scandalo ipsos
praeterire nequeat.
§2 But the minister bars occult sinners, if they seek [the sacrament] secretly
and he does not know them to be amended; but not if they publicly seek it and he
cannot pass over them without scandal.
So even secret sinners were refused communion even if they look for it in
private. This law clearly was about protecting the Eucharist from defilement. It
would be bizarre to argue that taking communion in a state of sin and
estrangement from God is not as much sacrilege as giving others a bad example.
In a sense, if they let themselves be inspired by your example that is their
concern.
Today's Canon Law decrees, Any baptized person not prohibited by law can and
must be admitted to holy communion - Canon 912. This forbids Protestants and
public sinners from communion.
PRIEST AT FAULT
In Catholicism, the priest has to intend to turn every wafer on the altar into
God. It is sinful for a mortal sinner to eat any of the transformed wafers. The
church should tell the priest not to intend to consecrate wafers that will end
up going down the throats of mortal sinners but does not. Then she blames only
the mortal sinner for desecrating the body of God as if her negligence and
insistence that the priest must consecrate all the wafers, had nothing to do
with it. Even if the wafer is not God the intention to trample on God is still
there but the Church says it is bad enough to stay in sin and have this
intention but worse to partake of the Lord’s Table.
WHY ISN'T THE EUCHARIST MERELY POTENTIALLY BENEFICIAL FOR SINNERS AND NOT
CONDEMNATORY?
If you receive the Eucharist or absolution in sin it is declared by the Church
that you never get the grace even if you repent later. But you should if you
would with any of the rest. To receive the sacrament in sin should not be the
sin of trampling on grace for you can’t get any anyway but merely the sin of
mocking a sacred symbol if it should be sinful at all. It should not be a sin in
these ways at all if the intention you have is that the grace will be given to
you when you turn to God. It would be better than nothing. And also, not going
to communion because you want a sin to remain on your soul would be mocking it
anyway.
The Church says that the Eucharist gives you the spiritual food that lasts
forever. Jesus spoke of the bread that nourishes you for eternity. If that is
true, then if you resist the graces when you take communion you should get the
graces when you open yourself up to them. Catholic teaching denies that anybody
anywhere has full access to God and his graces and gifts. That in itself makes
it idolatrous.
CRITIQUE OF THE BAN
It is evil to tell anyone, “You can’t receive our Lord so go away.”
Asking sinners to stay way from communion unless they repent and get God's
pardon is a very judgmental attitude. Some people who live in a state of “sin”
cannot be guilty of serious sin for they are too weak to stop. The Church is
wrong to judge them. The unfairness of the whole thing is more than plain when
it is seen that the Church teaches that it is wrong to judge. To do it herself
is to sanction hypocrisy and hypocrisy is a very nasty insult against people who
do judge and those who need to do it but are told not to. The priest who obeys
the Vatican and withholds communion is a hypocrite. It is up to each person to
examine themselves.
The Church says it can ban divorcees and homosexuals from communion not
necessarily because it judges them but because it judges their lifestyle as
unchristian or harmful and wants them to think about what they are doing and fix
it and not give example to others to live the same way. You can judge a person
as doing wrong without accusing that person of sin for the person could be
mistaken. If people cannot accept this treatment then it is clear that they
don’t care if they are right or wrong and/or want the Church to change what it
believes just for them. But many beliefs cannot be changed without the Church
ceasing to be the Church.
Perhaps it is wrong to refuse a sinner for it will hurt them and make them
despise the Church. The sinner should not be resentful for they deserve it. The
sinner should not have approached the altar. God can prevent the pain and the
hatred and if they happen it is the sinner’s fault or God’s will that they feel
this way. The Bible says that faith is a gift from God and that he has saved the
lowest sinners by faith. This approach forbids attempts to argue the person into
faith. It does not saying giving reasons to believe is wrong only that there
will be no faith unless God gives it. The doctrine of faith being a supernatural
gift rejects the notion that you really can put a person off faith in God. If
God helps them to believe and exercise faith, their anger at you for refusing
them communion will make no difference.
If there is no excuse for sending anybody who is in a grave state of sin away
from the altar without communion then that says things about the Pope and the
Vatican who command that that be done. The Holy Spirit if good is not inspiring
the Vatican’s attitude. The pope and his men know fine well that they are being
unjust for they are told often enough by progressive Catholics.
CONCLUSION
Religion should not be taken seriously enough for anybody to even consider
banning people from communion.
It is vindictive to condemn on religious grounds. We know that no truly good
person condemns another say for not saying some kind of prayer or for not
believing something in a holy book. The Eucharist is nasty balderdash.
The more people banned from Catholic communion the better!
BOOKS CONSULTED
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Dublin, 1954
Apologetics for the Pulpit, Aloysius Roche, Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd,
London, 1950
Born-Again Catholics and the Mass, William C Standridge Independent Faith
Mission, North Carolina, 1980
Catholicism and Fundamentalism, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco,
1988
Confession of a Roman Catholic, Paul Whitcomb, TAN, Illinois, 1985
Critiques of God, Edited by Peter A Angeles (Religion and Reason Section),
Prometheus Books, New York, 1995
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Press, Oxford, 1979
Eucharist, Centre of Christian Life, Rod Kissinger SJ, Liguori Publications,
Missouri, 1970
Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, Fr Charles Chiniquy, Chick Publications,
Chino, 1985
Is Jesus Really Present in the Eucharist? Michael Evans, Catholic Truth Society,
London, 1986
Handbook to the Controversy with Rome, Vol 2, Karl Von Hase MD, The Religious
Tract Society, London, 1906
Living in Christ, A Dreze SJ, Geoffrey Chapman, London-Melbourne, 1969
Martin Luther, Richard Marius, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999
Radio Replies, Vol 2, Frs Rumble and Carty, Radio Replies Press, St Paul,
Minnesota, 1940
Roman Catholic Claims, Charles Gore, MA, Longmans, Green & Co, London, 1894
Salvation, The Bible and Roman Catholicism, William Webster, Banner of Truth,
Edinburgh, 1990
Secrets of Romanism, Joseph Zaccello, Loizeaux Brothers, New Jersey, 1984
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Veritas, Dublin, 1995
The Early Church, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987
The Mass, Sacrifice and Sacrament, William F Dunphy, CSSR, Liguori Publications,
Missouri, 1986
The Primitive Faith and Roman Catholic Developments, Rev John A Gregg, APCK,
Dublin, 1928
The Student’s Catholic Doctrine, Rev Charles Hart BA, Burns & Oates, London,
1961
This is My Body, This is My Blood, Bob and Penny Lord, Journeys of Faith,
California, 1986
Why Does God…? Domenico Grasso SJ, St Pauls, Bucks, 1970
The Web
Transubstantiation, Is it a True Doctrine?
http://www.geocities.com/christian_apologist2001/
BIBLE QUOTATIONS FROM:
The Amplified Bible
