"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Wednesday, May 29, 2002 "The New Authoritarian Clericalists"
A priest writes:
"I read with interest your post about the Boston Office of Worship discouraging Perpetual Adoration. I became a priest precisely because I love, worship and adore Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. That a priest, in the name and presumably with the connivance of the Bishop, would discourage adoration is offensive to me in the extreme.
"I have read the relevant sections of Canon Law and the Instruction on Holy Communion and Worship of the Eucharist Outside Mass, and there is nothing in there that links Adoration (perpetual or otherwise) to communion under both kinds, a 'sufficient' number of Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist or music at Mass. This Archdiocesan directive is the worst kind of ecclesial arrogance: it imposes burdens on Christ's people to advance an agenda contrary to the mind of the Church, with no other support other than the Diktat of bureaucratic Will.
"Furthermore, I am not as sure about this, and will welcome correction from a canonist, but nothing in Canon Law or the liturgical books I have consulted even necessitates that the Bishop must give permission for Perpetual Adoration. On the face of it such a permission would be an absurdity: one does not require episcopal permission for any licit devotion (which is what
Eucharistic exposition and adoration is). You don't need episcopal permission to have the Rosary in your parish, do you? A bishop cannot arrogate to himself the authority to grant or deny what the Church herself grants to all.
"I am boggled at the sheer effrontery of the self-appointed liturgical elite, and the episcopal drones who kowtow to them. I am afraid for them, and for anyone other pastor who, rather than feed Christ's flock, denies them the Truth and spiritual sustenance they need."
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