Archbishop Thlagale spells out how we need to treat the Eucharist

At his Chrism sermon this year His Grace Archbishop Buti Thlagale gave the following sermon.

THE PRIEST AND EUCHARISTIC ADORATION

Pope John Paul declared the year 2005, the Year of the Eucharist. At the conclusion of that year, he canonized five saints distinguished for their Eucharistic piety (S.C. No. 4). He also issued the Apostolic Letter Mane Nobiscum Domine and an Encyclical on The Mystery and Worship of The Holy Eucharist (2005). Pope Benedict continued on the same theme with his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, The Sacrament of Charity (Sacramentum Caritatis). The Congregation of Divine Worship issued an Instruction on The Sacrament of Redemption (2004). These valuable documents address the mystery of the Eucharist, and are closely related to the Priesthood.

The Year of the Eucharist has come and gone, and yet (as a diocese) we can hardly boast of a good grasp of these documents and the teaching they contain. My strong plea to the priests: put these documents within the reach of your parishioners. Help us translate them into vernacular languages where necessary. This is one way of reawakening and increasing Eucharistic faith. This is the supreme treasure of the Catholic Church.

While the Eucharist and Eucharistic Adoration have not emerged as a major theme at our Diocesan Synod, it is no doubt the basis, the foundation, the cornerstone of the themes adopted by the Synod.

Turning our attention to the Eucharist and Eucharistic Adoration can only enhance and deepen the themes adopted by the Synod.

The Eucharist is the source and summit of all that the Church is and does. The breaking of the bread has always been at the centre of the life of the Church (Mane, 3). The Eucharist holds within itself the whole spiritual treasure of the Church (P.A. No. 5).


Through the ministry of the priest, Christ entrusted to us a memorial of His own passion and resurrection. The memorial makes effectively present here and now an event in the past, the death and resurrection, of Jesus Christ. The power of these events touches, and transforms us. In Baptism and in the Eucharist we enter into a communion of life and mission with the crucified and risen Lord. We take upon ourselves His mission to transform both our lives and the lives of others. The Eucharist is the most precious gift, the pearl of great price given to the Church by the Lord Himself. After receiving both the Body and Blood of Christ, we say “Amen”, affirming the real presence of the Body and Blood of Christ Himself. His invisible presence is made visible through the visible signs of bread and wine. The Eucharist gives Catholics their unique identity. The non-celebration of the Eucharist because of the shortage of priests weakens this Catholic identity.

When there are serious and deep divisions and conflicts in our ranks as priests and in our parishes, then we contradict the spirit of the Eucharist which is “a sacrament of love, a sign of unity and a bond of charity” (S.C. No: 47).

One of the chief duties of a priest is to be a faithful disperser of the mysteries of God. To him it is given to lead his people to faith and conversion. “How are they to believe in him they have not heard? How are they to hear if no one preaches and how are men to preach unless they be sent?” (Rm.10.14) (S.C. No. 8,19).

The priest and the deacon have a close relationship with the Eucharist. The Eucharist, says John Paul, “is the principal and central raison d’etre of the Sacrament of the Priesthood. Priests derive from the Eucharist and exist for the Eucharist” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, No. 2). Priests are in a special way responsible for the Eucharist. They are entrusted with the Eucharist for others. The people of God expect from priests a particular veneration and Eucharistic piety.

Now, Eucharistic Adoration “is simply the natural consequence of the Eucharistic Celebration, which is itself the Church’s supreme act of adoration” (S. Caritatis No. 66). Adoration, outside Mass “prolongs and intensifies’ all that takes place during the Eucharistic Celebration. Adoration itself is an act of witnessing when one sees many gathered in silence before the Lord. Eucharistic Adoration should become part and parcel of our way of being Church. Many have said that Eucharistic Adoration promotes vocations to the priesthood and to religious life. Children, youth and adults should be taught and encouraged to appreciate the beauty of silence in the presence of Jesus Christ.

Our attitude, external behaviour, our gestures, our bodily movements reveal our faith, or, our lack of faith in the invisible presence of God, in the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist, in the Consecrated Hosts in the tabernacle.

 Many enter the church and do not make the sign of the cross with holy water.
 Many no longer genuflect, not even a bow that acknowledges the presence of Christ in the tabernacle.
 Altar rails that have been dismantled, thus we no longer kneel when receiving the ‘Body of Christ’.
 Our churches are like a market place before and after Mass partly because we have moved the tabernacle to a separate room, or simply because we have lost the sense of the presence of the Holy. We have abandoned silence and a prayerful atmosphere in the church.
 Where possible, we need to restore the centrality of the tabernacle. We need to recover the culture and practice of genuflecting and of silence.
 Church law requires us to fast for an hour before the Eucharist. The chewing of gum during Mass is simply distasteful.
 External gestures help to condition our internal spiritual attitude towards the Holy.
 By putting in church pews without kneelers, we effectively discourage the faithful from kneeling during Consecration.
 The taking of Communion to the sick often leaves much to be desired. Usually Consecrated Hosts are distributed to lay ministers after Communion. And the priest asks: How many? How many what? It does not sound like a language of people who recognise the presence of the Lord.


Lay ministers carrying Communion often stop to chat with friends before going to the sick. At times they rush to do a shopping round before proceeding to the sick. It is not unusual for some to keep the Consecrated Hosts at home because they did not find the sick person or because on their return, they found the church locked.
 It is not unusual for tabernacles to be broken open (or stolen) and the Consecrated Hosts scattered about on the floor. It is not enough simply to collects the Hosts and put them back into the tabernacle. There is a need for a cleansing rite and for repentance.
 It is most edifying to see the priest praying with altar-servers in the sacristy before and after Mass. Silence in the sacristy is also conductive to an atmosphere of prayer. Such a practice stays with the altar-servers long after they have graduated from the sacristy. Some sacristies regrettably are like a market place. No prayers are said.
 It would be ideal if priests could once more pray while they vest in the sacristy. This practice would reinforce the culture of silence and a proper preparation for Holy Mass.
 It would equally be ideal to restore for the lay faithful, prayers before the Mass and prayers of thanksgiving after Mass. Such exercises would help us to focus on the “real presence” of Christ who has been received during Mass.

As custodians of the Eucharist, it is our privilege to promote Eucharistic Adoration so that those who do so may savour the grace of healing that comes from the Lord Himself.

Young people read novels: Wole Soyiaka, Chinua Achebe, Zeke Mphahlele, Bessy Head, Shakespeare, Jane Austin, Wallet Vilakazi, Dostoyevski, Tolstoi, etc., I plead with the priests, deacons and catechists to introduce young people to John Paul’s, Pius XII’s and Benedict XVI’s writings on the Eucharist and on Eucharistic Adoration.

We therefore wish to propose Eucharistic Adoration to be enacted in every parish community where such a practice does not yet exist.
 We also recommend that it be the theme of the Archdiocese for the next three years in order for a Eucharistic movement to emerge. We see Eucharistic Adoration as strengthening and deepening the themes decided upon by the Diocesan Synod.
 We strongly recommend a return to the processions of Corpus Christi in order to give public witness to our faith.
To summarise. In the Mass, Jesus Christ is the ultimate form of “eucharistia” i.e. thanksgiving. He is the perfect expression of praise to the Father. His act of thanksgiving makes our sacrifice possible. Before such a great Sacrament, we can only echo the words of the centurion: “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word, and my soul shall be healed” (Mt.8.8). In Eucharistic Adoration therefore, we meditate on the marvellous, intriguing mystical supper. We continue to offer thanksgiving and praise for the Passion of Our Lord which has unveiled God’s immeasurable love for each one of us. We have a compelling duty to raise the bar with regard to Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist.

Lord, help us believe.

+Buti Tlhagale
Holy Thursday
2009

The true cost of the contraceptive culture.

(This is the second article that appeared in the Southern Cross. Editor)

When the Pill was first introduced in the sixties it was believed that it would be of great benefit to women. Over forty years later we know better. The Pill (along with other forms of hormonal contraception) has harmed women: it has paved the road for abortion on demand, it has harmed women physically and it has created a sexually charged society.
In the US the "privacy" doctrine that underlies Roe vs Wade was established in previous Supreme Court decisions which struck down State bans on contraception. Where contraception leads abortion inevitably follows and when it does women suffer. On a world wide basis abortion discriminates against women. In China if you are unfortunate enough to be a baby girl you stand a good chance of receiving a lethal injection into the fontanel as soon as your head clears the birth canal - simply because you are a female in a country in which a one-child policy operates and boys are more highly valued than girls. In China and India the ultra-sound has become women’s worst enemy. As soon as a couple wanting a boy finds out that their baby is a girl she is aborted.
From the very beginning the Pill has been dogged by sexism. The first clinical trials were conducted in Puerto Rico. Three women died. The conclusion: change the dosages. When the first study of a Male Pill was conducted one of the test subjects experienced some slight shrinkage of his testicles. That study was abandoned. No viable form of Male Pill has ever been developed. The risks are no doubt considered too extreme.
And from that very first study until to-day women have been dying. Dosages have been changed in order to lower the risks of heart attack, blood clots, stroke and liver tumours. But risks remain and when you consider that this is a medication is taken by millions of women even low risk percentages become significant. In addition, as the contraceptive culture gets more entrenched and women use hormonal birth control from a younger age and for greater duration new risks emerge.
Studies that have focused on younger women are now revealing a link between hormonal contraceptives and breast cancer. Commenting on his 2006 study in the journal "Mayo Clinic Proceedings" Dr. C Kalhenborn stated that in "21 out of 23 retrospective studies done since 1980 ... women who took oral contraceptives prior to the birth of their first child sustained a 44% average increased risk of developing pre-menopausal breast cancer. This risk rose to 52% for women who took the Pill for at least four years prior to the birth of their first child." To-day the Pill is often given to young girls to help control acne and painful periods, to say nothing of the sexually active teens who are on the Pill.
Why is it that so few people are aware of these risk factors? Medical practitioners and many feminists understand the risks associated with hormonal and other forms of contraception. These forms of contraception are acceptable to them because they argue that the associated risks are less than the health risks of a pregnancy. This is equivalent to a doctor saying "You have a splinter in your finger. Splinters in fingers can cause infection and perhaps death, so we have to cut off you finger." The question you would ask is "Can’t we just remove the splinter". Basically you’re asking "is there an alternative, less radical treatment?".
In the field of birth control Natural Familiy Planning is that less radical treatment. We should be comparing the total health effects of hormonal contraceptives with the total health effects of natural family planning.
The reason that most liberal feminists do not want to make this comparison is that natural family planning has one ‘drawback’. A moral component that is at odds with their moral not medical worldview. Natural family planning is not the method of birth control for ‘singles bar’ pick-up sex. It is not taken seriously because it conflicts with the "Sex and the City" lifestyle so dear to liberal feminism.
From the teenage girl who attempts suicide because she was "used" to the women venting their rage against unfaithful men on the internet, it is clear that this lifestyle is not working for women. Something is broken but few people really understand the reason. It is artificial contraception that allows us to break the link between sex and children and marriage. When that link is broken sex loses its context and when that happens, it is women who bear the immediate and most serious consequences of that break.
Adultery, divorce, pornography, child pornography, prostitution, the exploitation of women by the media, the early sexualisation of girls are just a few examples of what happens in a male-dominated society when sexual pleasure is divorced from marriage and children.
In addition, the use of artifical contraception of all types has harmed the faith life of Catholic women. The Church’s teaching is clear, artificial contraception is wrong. Many bishops and priests are quite happy not to present the Church’s teaching and to leave women in a moral limbo. They should not be surprised when especially young women desert the Church. These bishops and priests have by their cowardice first deserted these women to a sexist and exploitative society. .

What is Signum and does orthopraxis involve braces?

Signum is a newly created Catholic communications company that is currently focussing on producing short, affordable booklets on issues of importance to Catholics.

The purpose of the Signum blog is to provide Signum readers with additional information on topics covered in our booklets as well as to give Signum authors the opportunity to comment on a range of Catholic issues.

Orthopraxis does not require braces. Just as orthodoxy has to do with correct doctrine and orthodontics has to do with correctly aligned teeth, orthopraxis deals with the correct practice of the liturgy. Specifically in our case, assisting the widespread resurrection of the Traditional Latin Mass. We also aim to support Benedict XVI's attempts to reform the New Mass (especially the manner it is celebrated in many parishes) to better reflect the liturgical heritage of the Church.

Another aim is to make it easier for Catholics to live a life that is in accord with the moral teachings of the Church. The problem is not so much that we all are sinners in need of God's mercy but to-day within the Church we have many Catholics who publically reject the Church's teaching. This not only has a bad effect on Catholics but a terrible effect on society. Society does not take the Catholic Church seriously because Catholics do not take their Church seriously enough to follow Her teachings.

There is a positive side to this problem. As the old saying goes "we cannot break God's Law, only break ourselves (or our society against) God's Law". After forty years of widespread rejection of Church teaching the personal and social consequences are there for all to see. As Catholics we no longer have to prophesy, we merely have to record and inform.

Michelle Pedra's article caused a stir when it first appeared in the Southern Cross. It illustrated that Catholic women were harming themselves by not following the Church's teaching on contraception and that the Catholic Church was anything but misogynist and behind the times, but really at the fore front of fighting for the dignity of women.

This article is the first in a series of four (two are still to be printed in the Southern Cross). When all four of Michelle's article have appeared we hope to re-print them as a Signum booklet.

Women taking control, naturally.

"Patriarchal", "Sexist". Those are the terms that you think most feminists would use when describing the Catholic Church. After all it is an organisation headed exclusively by men, only men can be priests, only men can be bishops, only a man can be Pope. But ironically a few feminists are coming to realise that in the Catholic Church women have their greatest ally.

In the fundamental area of reproductive health and fertility they are coming to see that the Catholic Church is right; that Her policies which seemed out of step with the times and repressive are in fact the reverse – ahead of their times and liberating; and that it is the modern contraceptive culture that is really repressing women.

It is only the Catholic Church that does not see women’s fertility as something that must be cut out, tied up or treated with long-term medication as if it was a disease. It accepts women as a creation of God and seeks to work with women’s nature rather than against it (as it equally seeks to work with men’s nature rather than against it).

This is the very opposite of artificial contraception - or what is euphemistically called Birth Control. Inasmuch as it is control, it is rather the kind of control that is repression, namely the repression of a natural process within a woman’s body. We should therefore not be surprised when we discover that this kind of "control" has all sorts of negative side effects. Let us imagine that for one minute women could convince men that they should receive medical treatment to stop urinating. How soon before some serious side-effects started showing up?
This repression of a natural function is what tens of millions of women are doing when they use artificial contraception.

But it doesn’t stop there, most women have precious little knowledge about contraception. How many women are aware of the side effects of the Pill? How many know that the IUD (intra-uterine device) can cause early abortion? How many women know that taking the Pill has been associated with increased incidence of breast cancer in those who take the Pill before a first full-term pregnancy, with an increased risk of stroke, blood clots in the lung and cervical cancer? Of course all medicines have side effects, but these are perfectly healthy women who do not need to be on these medications. Along with these life-threatening side effects significant numbers of women on the Pill also experience migraine headaches, loss of libido, moodiness and weight gain. Nutritional expert Patrick Holford advises women seeking to lose weight not to take hormonal contraceptives.

The most pernicious form of repression is that most women do not know that there is a safe, non-surgical and highly effective alternative to artificial contraception. A recent study conducted in Germany and published in the leading European reproductive health journal, "Human Reproduction Today" shows that the pregnancy rate for women who used the Sympto-thermal method (STM– a modern form of natural family planning] correctly was 0.4%. That is one pregnancy a year for every 250 women. The Pill has a pregnancy rate of around 0.5%, which makes the Pill less effective than the Sympto-Thermal Method. Even a radical method such as sterilisation for either men or women has a 0.5 % pregnancy rate. So people who claim that they are using artificial contraception because to have another child would endanger their lives would be better off using a natural form of birth control.

Natural family planning is so successful because it focuses on finding out exactly when a woman is fertile. A woman’s chances of falling pregnant are a lot lower than one would normally think. The prime reason for this is that once a woman releases an egg (the ovum) each month, at ovulation, that egg only survives for twenty-four hours. If conception is to occur the sperm (which can survive for a few days within a woman’s body) has to come into contact with the egg within that time or it cannot be fertilised.

The female body gives a number of signs that indicate that ovulation is about to occur or that ovulation has occurred. Natural family planning works by observing these signs and interpreting them. If a pregnancy needs to be avoided the couple simply refrains from engaging in intercourse during this period. As medical research has shown, this can be done with a high degree of reliability.

Is there then any medical reason why Catholic women should choose not to follow the teachings of the Church? When I put this question to leading fertility awareness researcher and trainer, Dr. Heinz Wirz he answered "There is no medically justifiable reason for using artificial contraception."

The challenge is for Catholic women (and their partners) to become fully informed and to insist upon being informed about all of the aspects of contraception and for them rather to take control of their fertility naturally.