This latest piece of garbage from the ignorant God-hating priest (and professor at Notre Shame university, that den of Satan) Richard McBrien, who has both entertained and enraged us many times in the past with his ridiculous and dated rhetoric in the NCR and elsewhere – rhetoric against the church he is sworn to serve: he calls the piece “Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration,” and it’s as vile a piece of snobbery as I’ve read in a while.
Full of silly and stupid historical inaccuracies (I hope for the case of your immortal soul, Fr. McBrien, that they aren’t deliberate), leftist accusations against traditionalism as “medieval,” venom and hatred for nuns and other faithful who would dare worship Christ, and at least one serious and glaring theological inaccuracy regarding the Eucharist itself, McBrien seems determined to dissuade those faithful who may be ignorant or new enough in their faith against the practice, which, in this writer’s opinion, is one of the most beautiful things a layperson in the church can engage in.
Let’s take a few quotes from his laughable debacle and present them here for the rest of us to mock. We’ll begin with his opening statement. In a dire tone of false concern, he notes that perpetual Eucharistic adoration has returned to the city of Boston – once strong with the faithful. The Boston Globe, a state-controlled propaganda outlet not worthy of our attention, has already published a piece mocking the practice, and the Holy Body of Christ. As I doubt Michael Paulson’s soul ever had much of a hope of heaven (unlike McBrien, he makes no claims on it), it’s unlikely that the piece alone damned him to hell, but it also didn’t help his chances much. Besides constant subtle mockery of the Church and the faithful, he constantly refers to the Body of Christ as a “wafer.” This is a typical demonic tactic meant to goad believers into wrath. Unfortunately, it works well on this particular believer, but that’s beside the point. McBrien has this to say about Paulson’s mockery:
It was unfortunate, to be sure, that he constantly referred to the eucharistic [sic] host as a “wafer,” “consecrated” or not. However, the distinction between a “wafer” and a “host,” that some letter-writers were quick to insist upon, would be lost on non-Catholics (the Globe reporter himself is not a Christian), and indeed on most Catholics as well.
The constant use of the word “wafer” did lead some readers to conclude that the practice of eucharistic [sic] adoration is nothing less than a form of idolatry. How else explain why someone would sit or kneel hour after hour in adoration of a simple “wafer”?
So are we referring to the practice as idolatry, McBrien? One wonders if maybe your simple mind was one of the ones convinced. Unfortunate, that. I suppose it’s not worth a poor ignorant layman’s time (mine) to explain to you the purpose and beauty of the adoration of Christ. I’m sure it would be lost on you.
On to the theological error. McBrien, as do all “priests” of his ilk, denies the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. No need to accuse him of something he indirectly states, either – he makes it quite plain in this quote from his article:
It was also unfortunate that Paulson described the Catholic belief in the Real Presence (a technical theological and doctrinal term that did not appear in the story) as a “literal” transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus during Mass. The transformation (the medieval word was “transubstantiation”) is sacramental, not literal or physical.
In other words, the bread and the wine retain the properties of bread and wine. They look like bread and wine and taste like bread and wine, but Catholics (and many other Christians as well) believe that the bread and wine have been sacramentally changed into the body and blood of Christ.
Thus, the bread and wine may still appear to be bread and wine, but in the course of the Eucharistic Prayer (formerly called the Canon of the Mass) they have been changed sacramentally, not literally or physically, into the body and blood of Christ.
Wrong. This teaching is heretical, protestant, and has been constantly refuted by the Church since at least Ignatius of Antioch in the 1st century refuted the claims of Gnostics who denied the Real Presence (cf The History of Eucharistic Adoration, John A. Hardon, S.J.). The presence of Christ is in fact real – body and blood, soul and divinity – in the bread and wine, and this has been the teaching of the church since Christ himself said so (John 6:32-35).
This teaching, in response to the denial of the real presence by the heretic Berengarius, was reaffirmed strongly by Pope Gregory VII in the 11th century (thereby beginning a golden age of Eucharistic adoration in Europe). Pope Paul VI quotes him verbatim in Mysterium Fidei, thus (emphases mine):
I believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine placed upon the altar are, by the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer, substantially changed into the true and life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and that after the consecration, there is present the true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin and offered up for the salvation of the world, hung on the cross and now sits at the right hand of the Father, and that there is present the true blood of Christ which flowed from his side. They are present not only by means of a sign and of the efficacy of the Sacrament, but also in the very reality and truth of their nature and substance.
Richard McBrien has therefore declared with his own words that he is a heretic, and has denied one of the most fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church throughout history. Sad that an atheistic reporter was more accurate on this topic than a priest of the Church. I will quote St. Francis of Assisi regarding those who deny this presence (emphasis mine):
Sacred Scripture tells us that the Father dwells in “light inaccessible” (I Timothy 6:16) and that “God is Spirit” (John 4:24). And St. John adds, “No one at any time has seen God” (John 1:18). Because God is a spirit He can be seen only in spirit; “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63). But God the Son is equal to the Father and so He too can be seen only in the same way as the Father and the Holy Spirit. That is why all those were condemned who saw our Lord Jesus Christ in His humanity but did not see or believe in spirit in His divinity, that He was the true Son of God. In the same way now, all those are damned who see the Sacrament of the Body of Christ which is consecrated on the altar in the form of bread and wine by the words of our Lord in the hands of the priest, and do not see or believe in spirit and in God that this is really the most holy Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Strong words. St Francis bears little patience for those who would deny the real presence of Christ. His presence in the Eucharist is what sustains us in our spiritual lives (and indeed has even sustained saints physically over long periods of consuming nothing but the body of Christ in the Eucharist), not the sacrament itself.
McBrien, however, is not done. After asserting that the practice of Eucharistic Adoration began in the 12th century (incorrect – its roots can be traced back at least as far as the 4th century, and perhaps much earlier), and then making the absurd claim that it gradually fell out of practice thereafter until some nuns revived it in Boston around 1940, he ejects the following statements:
Notwithstanding Pope Benedict XVI’s personal endorsement of eucharistic [sic] adoration and the sporadic restoration of the practice in the archdiocese of Boston and elsewhere, it is difficult to speak favorably about the devotion today.
Now that most Catholics are literate and even well-educated, the Mass is in the language of the people (i.e, the vernacular), and its rituals are relatively easy to understand and follow, there is little or no need for extraneous eucharistic [sic] devotions. The Mass itself provides all that a Catholic needs sacramentally and spiritually.
Eucharistic adoration, perpetual or not, is a doctrinal, theological, and spiritual step backward, not forward.
So let’s see, McBrien – in these 4 sentences, you have denied fidelity to the Pope’s teachings (which are staunchly in line with historical Church doctrine), denied the need for anything other than the Mass in a Catholic’s life (thereby denying that it is in fact the Eucharist which sustains us spiritually – this, also, has been taught as truth since the Church itself began), and called Eucharistic adoration itself a “step backward.”
I am not a priest, and so far be it from me to judge Fr. McBrien’s heresy. The Lord Himself will judge him harshly. My only request to McBrien would be that he resign his priesthood and quit calling himself a Catholic. No one who denies fundemental Church teachings can call himself that with honesty, and as a priest, McBrien (besides bringing down Divine judgement on himself that I dare not consider) has betrayed everyone who would have otherwise called him a brother. Beware, my spiritual brothers and sisters, of wolves such as these.
This is an outrage!