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1. Baptism and Original Sin
2. Why we confess our sins to a priest
3. Annulment and Communion
4. Communion in the hand
5. Genuflection in Church

1. Baptism and Original Sin
Q: At the Baptism of my 3rd cousin in a thoroughly modernist Catholic parish, the priest never once referred to Original Sin or sin at all. We were told we were "welcoming a new member of the Body of Christ" and "initiating the baby into the faith." I am not sure what "faith" this priest meant. So please answer the following: What happened to Original Sin and the concept of fallen man in need of a Savior? Has Baptism been demoted from Sacrament to an Initiation Rite (Sent by B.C.)

A: Your question is a relevant one and goes to the very heart of what we believe about this fundamental matter of our faith. The priest was not wrong in saying that Baptism is an initiation into the Body of Christ, understood as the Catholic Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out (nn. 1210-1211) that Baptism is the first of the three Sacraments of Initiation, Eucharist and Confirmation being the other two. However, if I read the feeling behind your question correctly, he regretfully left out the central reason why Christ instituted the Sacrament of Baptism which is to wipe away Original Sin! This was a culpable omission on his part; fortunately his omission does not affect the validity of the sacrament.

To omit mentioning sin at a Baptism is like having a statue of a Risen Christ in a church and pretending that He didn’t die. The purpose of His dying was to blot out our sins, and to focus only on the happy moment of the Resurrection is to give an incomplete picture of the matter and could leave the participants with a very skewed notion of why we dare get baptized as children rather than adults. Infant baptism, after all, separates us from the other Christian denominations that only baptize adults. Catholics and Orthodox think this doctrine through to its logical conclusion; namely, that we should want to free ourselves from Original Sin at the earliest stage of life so that sanctifying grace may open a path to holiness.

The secondary purpose of the Sacrament of Baptism is to infuse into the baptized person the theological gifts of Faith, Hope and Charity and the supreme Gift of the Holy Spirit of which the baptized person receives a full measure in the Sacrament of Confirmation.

I will pray that the priest in question returns to the sane practice of catechizing the faithful about Original Sin at the teachable moment of a holy Baptism so that they understand why we even have the Mystical Body of Christ.

2. Why we confess our sins to a priest
Q: One of the questions I'm confronted with most often is, "Why on earth do you need a priest to confess your sins. I just go straight to my Father and tell him myself that I'm sorry." (Sent by D.K. from FL)

A: A good question and one that undoubtedly confronts many Catholics. We Catholics confess our sins to a priest and not just to God in private as a means of spiritual accountability to an established religious authority that acts in the Name of God and as a means to cultivate a concrete sense of our own sinfulness. Confessing to God directly in private can be just an exercise in self-deception or at least a pious exercise that makes us feel good. It may be good to ask the person who advocates that practice two questions, “Well then how do you know you are not just confessing to yourself and how do know you are forgiven?” Catholics have answers to these questions as will be outlined below.

Since many of the people who challenge our practice of private confession to a priest are fundamentalists, it is important that we root our answers in Scripture so here are a few biblical reasons to accompany the common sense ones above.

Biblical reason #1: Even before Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Penance people were already confessing their sins to John the Baptist when they got baptized in the Jordan (cf. Mt 3:6). John was the son of the priest Zechariah and was therefore a priest by heredity. The Jews thus already knew a form of personal confession of sins in Jesus’ time—in John at least they were confessing their sins to a priest. It was only the Protestant rebellion that told us that individual confession to a man was wrong.

Biblical reason #2: Jesus Himself told the apostles to forgive sins. Check out John 20:22-23 where the post-Resurrection Jesus says, “Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive are forgiven them. Whose sins you retain are retained.” Now if Jesus did not want consecrated men to make a judgment on other men’s sins (forgive or retain), why would He have given them the power to do it? On top of that, these men and their successors have to actually hear the sins of men in auricular confession in order to decide whether to forgive or retain them. Priests do not forgive generalized sin. They forgive actual sins that men have confessed to them.

There is also a great passage at the end of the story about the paralytic who Jesus forgave of his sins before He cured him. The disciples rejoiced that “God gave such authority to men” (Mt 9:1-8). This is not a reference to Jesus. It is plural and so is a reference to the ones to whom He entrusted the same power to forgive sins.

Biblical reason #3: The Apostle James says, “Declare your sins to one another…” (Ja 5:16) which may be seen as a recognition that this practice is of a very early origin in the New Testament itself. This may be interpreted in a communal or personal sense.

Finally, the Church determines that there are seven sacraments, and Penance being one of them is a defined Doctrine of the Faith, not a matter of person preference.

3. Annulment and Communion
Q: On 10/8/06 our new priest gave a sermon on the Church's teachings on divorced and remarried people being unable to receive Holy Communion (no annulment). Six women with their children walked out! When he said "You can not be Catholic and Pro-choice" on 10/1/06, many people stiffened up and one woman after Mass said she was "Catholic and Pro-choice." This newly ordained priest is by far the exception and I wonder how long he will be vocal on these issues. (From B. B. in FL)

A: I congratulate your fine priest on his moral courage in preaching the fullness of the Catholic Faith. Undoubtedly he will be martyred!

People’s perceptions about the Church’s teaching on the inviolability of the marriage bond and its relationship to civil divorce are often skewed. Unfortunately there are many divorced Catholics with previous sacramental marriages who remarry thinking that they are free to receive Communion as Catholics in good standing. This is not true. Divorced Catholics who remarry are prohibited from receiving Communion—or any sacraments for that matter—as a recognition that their remarriage has put them in a state of adultery which must cease if they are to worthily receive Communion again.

In its teaching on the sanctity of marriage, the Church does nothing more than faithfully communicate what Christ taught in Matthew 19: 6, “let no man separate what God has joined.” The Catholic Church takes a bad rap for defending the indissolubility (i.e., un-breakability) of the marriage bond, but she cannot do otherwise. It is Christ’s will that we defend marriage as a permanent bond lasting “for better or for worse…until death do us part.”

This also means that civil divorce does not dissolve the spiritual bond that “God has joined.” There is nothing that can dissolve it if it actually exists, and it is important to understand that the issuance of an annulment decree by the Church is not the dissolution of a marriage bond properly formed. An annulment (properly called a “decree of nullity”) is only a recognition that the bond was never there in the first place. Only with a judgment from the Church on the non-existence of the previous bond may a divorced person remarry in the Church and with the full blessing of the Sacrament of Matrimony.

While divorced Catholics who remarry may not receive any of the Sacraments until and if they are free to do so, they are not, however, barred from attending Mass and participating in the devotional life of the Church. Indeed they are encouraged to do so, as long as scandal does not result, in order to receive grace from the many streams of the Church’s river of life.

Concerning the “Catholic and Pro-Choice” matter, the priest was absolutely correct: the two are totally incompatible. Pro-choice means killing babies no matter what way you look at it, and the two terms are contradictory. A person who persists in claiming that he or she is “pro-choice” needs a good short-course in Catholic morality and must reform this pharisaical attitude in order to remain both in the grace of God and in the Church. The Church asks for basic honesty about our beliefs. You simply can’t be both “Catholic and Pro-Choice.” This is the burden of “choice.”

4. Communion in the hand
Q: Our pastor gives my husband and I one host split in half in our hands (half for each of us) with a special prayer. I use my hand to give communion to homebound persons who receive in the hand or on the tongue according to their preference. Lately, I've been coming across articles that say that communion in the hand is disrespectful. One such is quoted here: "The Holy Eucharist is trampled underfoot. My children take the Holy Eucharist in their hands, my Son Jesus, sacrileges upon sacrileges!!" and "They receive Jesus in their hands—what sorrow for my Son and for me." (From a publication of MLOR Corporation 2002, a testimony of Blessed Mother's appearances to Rosa Quattrini, 1969.) The other article was a Franciscan blog for Secular Franciscans. I haven't heard or read anything from the Hierarchy on this matter. Can you enlighten me? What is the directive from the Vatican? (Sent by B.J.M.)

A: I note that the publication you cite quotes a testimony from 1969 which was the same year that the Vatican authorized in a limited fashion the reception of Holy Communion in the hand. This permission was granted explicitly to the United States at the request of our Bishops’ conference in 1977. We must be very clear that if the Church allows a practice which does not contradict or violate the moral law then we on our own authority cannot disallow it or call it a sacrilege.

Having said that, we also have to recognize that Communion in the hand was one of the devastating waves of liturgical liberlism that flowed over the Church in that era and continues into the present with, I believe, harmful effects for people’s sense of reverence and spirituality. Abandoning the worthy practice of receiving Communion on the tongue accompanied the rejection of Latin as the main liturgical language, kneeling at altar rails, age-old devotions and other pious practices that helped the faithful maintain their sense of the holy.

I am not sure why your priest splits the Host to put in your and your husband’s hands with a “special prayer,” but I sense it is this same trivialization of the sacred: the action has no intrinsic meaning in itself and could very easily take your focus off the Divine God and onto yourselves. I think the action is redundant and distracting especially with the addition of that unnecessary prayer—the Eucharist is a prayer!

I knew a nun that ridiculed people who, according to her, said they would not receive Communion in the hand because the hands commit sin. I never knew anyone who said that, but that was her idea. She then thought she was clever by pointing out that we also sin with our tongues. The practice of receiving Communion on the tongue is not a question of correct spiritual hygiene or some kind of scrupulous perfectionism as the nun thought. It is rather a pious devotion that inculcates respect for Whom we are receiving in a way that cannot be approximated by receiving Him in the hands. We do many familiar things with our hands, but being fed by another is a rare and mystical moment. We are not in control of that moment, God is. We are submissive to the one feeding us and have the understanding that we are being given something, not taking it.

It tests a priest’s patience during the distribution of Holy Communion that people attempt to grab the Host out of his hand or do not even have the decency to remove sweater sleeves, keys, purses and various other things that cover their palms so that their hands can’t actually receive Him. It just means that the people are not clued into what they are doing or Whom they are receiving. And sometimes they treat the Eucharistic Lord like a piece of popcorn that they toss in their mouth so disgracefully. The faithful were poorly instructed about receiving Communion in the hand when the practice arose in the seventies and in most cases were never instructed again let alone corrected in their sloppy habits.

I don’t even have the time or charity to go into the question of how people dress when they come up to receive Communion!

Since the Vatican allows the practice of receiving Holy Communion in the hand it is not something that an individual priest can actually forbid. It is permitted but not mandated, so I always recommend that, given the choice we choose the more respectful option. When the faithful receive Christ on their tongues they are receiving the greatest possible gift from the Church that wants to form in them the habit of profound worship of the most profound Love that exists.

Genuflection in Church

Q: I notice that the reverence of genuflection is not being emphasized in the Catholic Church. Why is that? (Sent by J.V.)

A: I thank you for bringing up the subject. Genuflection is a unique gesture, not an everyday or commonplace habit. In times past people used to genuflect or kneel in front of kings out of submission to their authority. In our Faith we express this respect for authority in certain ways such as a priest kneeling before a bishop to make his vow of obedience at ordination. This is a sign of submission to his legitimate God-given authority, but it is not an act of adoration of a man. That would be idolatry.

We do however genuflect and kneel before God as an act of adoration. When we enter a Catholic church we know, in most cases, that the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in the tabernacle, and our genuflection is one way that we adore God when we come into His Presence reserved sacramentally in the church.

The fact that people do not do that means either that they do not believe that God is present there or they do not care. I suspect that in most cases the problem is the latter, but there are polls that indicate an alarming percentage of Catholics that think the Eucharist is only a symbol of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. They are spiritual Protestants in such a case and should be called to accountability for this fundamental matter of our Catholic Faith.

With regard to the latter element—they do not care—I fault the priests who do not preach the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It indicates sometimes that the priests themselves have lost the True Faith because they are supposed to preach the fullness of the truth from the pulpit. It may also be indicative of slothfulness on the part of the clergy too. They do not have the zeal necessary to instruct the people in the fundamentals of the Faith.

One final matter may come into play here. Many modern churches are constructed in a fan shape or in such a way that the tabernacle is taken out of its center position and shoved into a side chapel. Believe me, after having traveled two-thirds of a million miles around the globe, I have seen it all. It is easy to lose the habit of genuflecting upon entering a pew when the liturgical environment makes you feel like you are attending a concert or a happy prayer service. This loss of focus almost never happens when the churches are traditional and the Blessed Sacrament receives its place of honor in the Center of the sanctuary. Whenever we take the Lord out of the Center, all falls apart.