Sally Quinn, a non-Catholic, received communion at a Catholic church? I'm shocked. Simply shocked.

I hate to tell you prissy papish types this, but it is and for at least a few generations has been quite common for non-Catholics to receive communion, especially at wedding and funeral masses, where they simply assume that it's the done thing. There are also a great many cases of non-Catholic visitors, sometimes non-Catholic regular mass-goers (e.g., those accompanying a spouse), electing to receive communion simply because they wish to feel part of the community ritual. The only thing different about Quinn is that she wrote about it.

It is a frequent enough occurrence that St. Patrick's in New York City distributes a small flyer in the pews at Sunday masses that explains, in quite unpretentious and diplomatic language, the traditional (but by no means universal) Catholic view that non-Catholics should not receive. I doubt seriously that Cardinal Egan and his petticoated minions are under any illusion that their polite request dissuades any but scrupulous visitors who might otherwise intend to partake. In other words, they know quite well that The Body & Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ® is being desecrated by unbelievers on a regular basis, in their very own church and from their very own hands--and they know that they can't do a thing about it, because of course there is no way of determining whether a would-be communicant, other than a presidential candidate sprouting horns and a tail, is a Catholic in good standing or not. The rest of you fish-eaters should be so sophisticated.

You really aren't thinking clearly, you know. (You fish-eaters, I mean.) You know very well what the underlying doctrine is: it is mortally sinful, if not a downright sacrilege, to receive The Body & Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ® "unworthily," i.e., without your "soul" being in "a state of sanctifying grace." (The catechism analogy is, "You wouldn't invite a guest into your house without cleaning it first, would you?") So it is not just poor benighted non-Catholics who shouldn't be allowed to take communion--it's every baptized Catholic who has an unshriven mortal sin on his or her conscience. Like, all those divorced and remarried Catholics. All those Catholic couples practicing "artificial contraception." Not to speak of those Catholic multitudes who, just possibly, might be guilty of lying, anger, gluttony, avarice, pride, or any of the other many, many, many mortal sins the Roman Catholic church at one time was quite happy to expand upon for your greater guilt feelings.

Don't tell me all you every-Sunday Catholic communicants are going to weekly, or even monthly, or even yearly confession to purge your souls. You're not. That went out with May Day processions and you know it. Most Catholic parishes now don't even have confessionals or regular times for confession; you call the rectory and make an appointment to meet the priest in his office. How many, say, unmarried Catholics are going to make an appointment to tell some guy they laid their boyfriend or girlfriend three times this week, and have every intention of doing it again next week? The priests know as well as anybody that nobody goes to confession. They love it, because there aren't very many priests left and confessions would eat up a great deal of their time, like they did long ago, when Catholic were taught they pretty much had to confess before receiving communion.

So, on just what basis are you human-all-too-human Catholics more "worthy" to receive The Body & Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ® than the non-Catholic? I mean, if you're sinning (go ahead, say you're not!) and not confessing, then just how is it that you are in a state of sanctifying grace? Through perfect contrition? But if you should get the benefit of that metaphysical slight-of-hand, then why not the poor benighted non-Catholic who merely wishes to feel closer to God through your communion, or at least to feel some fellowship with you oh-so-holy folks? Could not a non-Catholic feel love for God, and repentance for his wickedness, equal to yours? On what basis would you, or even your parish priest, presume to say s/he could or would not?

Face it, fish-eaters: your church considers it good business to maintain its brand, and you agree because you want your investment of time and belief to keep its value. So you spew Donovan-style huffing about Quinn allegedly "offending" your sacred beliefs. Oh, rot. If you really believe that you're communing with your Divine Savior when you receive communion, then why are you so busy looking around for non-Catholics trying to steal a few crumbs from the Lord's Table? You profess very nice sentiments toward them to their faces ("Come to church with us!"), but when it comes to the sacrament of peace and brotherhood (not to speak of eternal salvation), then let them pay their dues. (An idea the priests like, too, because they've got a lot of sexual abuse claims to pay off.) Your alleged founder had a good description of you:

But, woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

I know it's heresy on The Fray to question you, but I would point out that you gave quite a diatribe there! Bravo!

I would agree that the main problem with Ms. Quinn's situation was the way she wrote about it.

That would seem to me to be the main problem with the Catholic writers as well - they way they write about it.

I think that the vast majority of the 56 million Catholics worldwide do not "look around for non-Catholics trying to steal a few crumbs from the Lord's table."

I submit that the vast majority of those Catholics are humbly bowed in prayer and deeply involved in their own spiritual lives. A few loud-mouth writers don't necessarily speak for the whole kit and kaboodle of Catholic people. Just as I'm sure Ms. Quinn doesn't speak for everyone who mourns Tim Russert, or who experiences questions and feelings about various religious issues.

You are an excellent writer. I'm sorry you felt the need to condemn 56 million people because a few snarky writers got offended at Sally Quinn's reference to the host as "nauseating."

I think you might be slightly underestimating the number of Catholics worldwide, or did you mean that only 56 million were offended?

I think the consensus view is that worldwide Catholics number about 1.1 billion, although I am sure that some of these are Catholic in name only. I think US Catholic population is something aroung 70 million.

Fritz does seem to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Catholic Church of his youth.

Fritz (or should I more respectfully address you as Mr. Gerlich?)

Your post is as always erudite and insightful. I always look for your posts as I always find them delightful. I do have a (fish) bone to pick with you on this one. It has been some 45 or so years since Catholics were required to abstain from meat on Fridays. I believe the current requirement is only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Furthermore, Catholics are not required to eat fish. To perpetuate this stereotype is to ignore the many Catholics who do not like fish, and self-identify as macaroni and cheese Catholics. I am cerrtain from reading your always gracious, urbane and civil offerings that you did not intend to offend those M&C Catholics. (While do love me some macaroni and cheese, it is a rare guilty pleasure which does not fit well into the diet for the aging. I like fish well enough, especially firm fleshed white fish. Salmon not so much, although I've enjoyed excellent Alaskan smoked salmon, it is often poorly prepared and good fresh is not available inland. Canned Mackerel just looks too much like cat food so forget the mackerel-snapper appellation, for me, anyway.

If, of course, you are referring to the ancient and current symbol of Christ, well then, nevermind.

is just a kind of sad honorific now. But it was once a real ethnic marker, sort of like kosher is for Orthodox Jews. You think a fishmonger's son would use the term disrespectfully?

The pathetic attempts of contemporary American Catholics to re-ethnicize their church are frustrating to those of us who remember when it really did constitute a sociologically distinct entity with its own authentic folkways. Catholic "conservatives" today, with their "Tridentine" masses, their marathon "Adoration" sessions, and their "excommunication" of liberal politicians, are merely aping the demagogic successes of evangelicals (ironically at the very moment the evangelical movement is trying to reinvent itself (via causes like "environmental stewardship") to escape the discredit into which the Republican party and its noxious president have cast it). Evangelicals are at least more or less authentically ethnic, even if it is an ethnicity of strip malls, mega-churches, JesusMusak and cable religion networks. American Catholics haven't got a clue to their own ethnicity.

As for how to address me, my friends call me "Fritzl." The Nazis called me "Schweinehund."

I'm not "questioned"? Quite a few posters regularly knock me down and kick me. I don't mind. When you're dead, things like that are just amusing.

From what little I can see of the Catholic church these days, I would say you are right about sincerity. Since there are no longer ethnic reasons to practice the religion, most who do presumably are getting something of real personal value out of it.

My question is whether they're getting it from any sort of trustworthy spiritual source (like, say, several thousand official saints) or from the sort of opportunistic re-ethnicization Donovan represents. It isn't just him, you know. I still receive a Catholic newspaper, and it contains a lot of the same kind of Catholic primadonnaism.

You are a dear! Yes, I think I was getting the number 56 million as referring to Americans who consider themselves practicing Catholic back when the dust up was whether or not it was catechetically correct to pray for Sen. Kennedy's recovery during surgery.

Oh these number are so difficult to pin down when dealing with such big issues!

:)

I doubt I could estimate how many Catholics were actually offended - but I'm going to make a wild stab at say probably several hundred.

Can you do the math on that percentage? Several hundred out of 1.1 billion?

I'll just stick with 'not a lot' and my point that the vast majority of practicing Catholics have no opinion on Ms. Quinn's opinions.

I know I have had (and do have?) a love/hate relationship with The Catholic Church myself. Right now I seem to be in a calm, accepting, amenable stage. Must be my approaching half-century mark!

(I hope you don't mind my presumption of considering you a friend)

I cannot speak about where people get their source material from in re: spiritual succor. I just know that for me I had to go out and WAY around to get back.

And even now that I'm back, so to speak, I don't want to be pushed to hard to make any kind of broad declarations. For now it is enough that I feel connected to something greater than my own mind. And that is a great comfort!

We belong to a very small, rural, kind of redneck parish that has a multi-purpose building with hideous carpet, faux brick painted walls, plastic chairs and don't even get me started on the 7 ft. tall, screen-printed polyester-fabric 'banner' of Jesus hanging on the wall behind the altar.

I'm serious. Don't get me started.

We get to travel a lot and are in NYC just about one week per month and have enjoyed St. Patrick's.

But what we really like is the vast difference of ethos. Our home church has a very dear, very spiritual, very simple pastor who is friendly, kind and human. He cares. It shows. So that is what welcomes me.

I enjoy the mystery and pomp at some level, but not so much the spiritual. I just really enjoy great theater.

For the spiritual source I'll take a bit of human kindness on a daily basis, and feel blessed for it.

Take care.

a&s

Thank you for your thoughtful posts here and below. I think we are in a very similar place with regard to returning to the Church after a long time. We also attend a very small rural church and the only reason we are still open is the very large attendance we have from the camp folks in the summer who at least triple attendance from 40 ish to over 120.

Here's a story:

My wife and I were raised Catholic but away for a long time. Each divorced, so when we married it was not "in the Church", We were invited to attend for a "Scout Sunday" and continued to attend on a regular basis, but not taking Communion. After a couple years, it just so happened that we decided to go to Mass on Christmas Day rather than Christmas Eve. Whether it was stormy that day I don't remember, but we were the only two people in Church for Christmas Day Mass!

(We joke that she was the lector and I took the collection.)

When the time came for Communion, Father motioned us forward. She said, "Father ,we can't..." which he cut off and motioned us forward. He said in a soft voice, "It's no one's business." We took Communion and continued to. He was a man of kindness, and welcomed us as Jesus would, I'd like to think. He showed a simple devotion, but I'm told he was quite well versed in Theology and "legalisms". He left us not very long thereafter.

We have since reconciled the "legalisms", but that's another story.

Thanks again, A&S

I'm sorry if the euphemism confused anyone. Father was elderly and had celebrated his 60th anniversary as a priest. He died. He is the only person I have ever met in my life who I could say without reservation was a saint in life.

As for how to address me, my friends call me "Fritzl.

If I'm reading this correctly that's an L at the end. Sorry, haven't been for new glasses for a couple three years. I know, I know...

I agree with much of what you say. There are people coming back to the Church in their forties and fifties for the comfort, familiarity, and community. Or maybe mortality and their "programming" from childhood. I don't know. Most of them I guess don't agree with the policies on contraception and abortion, would like to see women and married clergy, and generally think the Church should take a big step into the modern world. Let alone the debate over infallibility vs. indefectibility (which I frankly haven't looked at in 35 years- I think Hans Kung was involved. I last considered that issue in a discussion with my mom ,a former Methodist, at the beach on vacation, but she died suddenly several hours later so I've never gone back to it. I just don't care...)

I don't see that many young people getting involved in the Church. We do have some young families, but pretty much they are coming because of their parents. I hope we can keep them because of the community.

I still remember and can recite some of the Latin from 45 years ago, but why would I drive 100 miles or more to go to a Latin Mass other than as a rare thing ( like a tourist attraction).

Suscipiat Dominus sacrificium de manibus tuus..

May the Lord accept this sacrifice at your hands...

I read a book an number of years ago called."How to Fix The Catholic Church" by Andrew Greeley and his sister. It was the worst title for a book I've ever seen, but it was a great book. It had nothing to do with fixing the Church, but it was about why Catholics are Catholics and about our heritage, I would recommend it for any interested.

Bless ya, Fritz

You don't have anything against dead people, do you?

Thanks for your account of your parish. I can appreciate its attraction from a distance, but it would be far too intimate for me. I worship in airports, where I often go into a mild trance watching people. Do you have any idea how much you can see in a face in thirty seconds, when you haven't got any involvement with the person it belongs to? (Fortunately, living people usually aren't aware of it when dead people commune with them.)

Try this church sometime (assuming you ever visit Hawaii). My über-Catholic ex-wife said the closest she ever came to a mystical experience was during a service there; her description made it sound a little like your congregation.

Another resource you might be interested in.

Since you go to NYC, you might already know this one, but if not you might enjoy visiting. I went to mass there two years ago when my daughter graduated from Columbia. Pure chance, since I happened to stay on the same block and walked past it (from the outside you'd scarcely know it was a church without the plaque), and suddenly the words "Thomas Merton" popped into my head. I hadn't thought of the old boy for years. But I felt I should drop in out of respect for what he once meant to me. The interior of the church (I'm sure different from in Merton's time) struck me as very fetching, and I gather it's well known for its music.

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I do wish those well who seek peace and truth where they think they last saw them. In my own case, however, it would be a little like Stephan Dedalus deciding to join the Jesuits.

Thank you for those recommendations -

I have been to the painted church, but not for mass. Next time I hope we can do more than just look.

We will check out that parish in NY. Currently our favorite Gotham church is this one: <link> It turns out to be a quite extraordinary experience each time.

And, hoping I don't sound too fawning over your dead self, I like the looks of the book too! Nope, dead people don't bother me at all - in fact, some of my favorite folks are dead!

Last time I was up in that high hundreds on the West side (in May) we spent a very nice day at The Cloisters. Its a muesum that's hard to get to, but worth it in my estimation. The Unicorn tapestries are exquisite, and one can peruse them uninterrupted. Lovely.

I do know what you mean about observation. I have found a lot of my most interesting material comes from an unplanned observation of another rather than mining the "rich depths" of my own life. Turns out the former informs the latter without my sounding like a self-obsessed ninny.