The Abuse of Power

Joseph Shaw on the importance of rights and obligations

The Coronavirus epidemic has affected the Latin Mass Society’s work in obvious ways: we have not been able to organise the events we usually organise, and this has now extended right across our busy summer period. We are working to do more online, to compensate for this, but the creation of online content takes time and expertise. By the time this edition of Mass of Ages appears I hope readers will have been able to see some of the fruits of this effort, with our online substitute for the Annual General Meeting. Viewers will have to bear with the sight of me giving an address having not had a haircut since February.

In the meantime, we are continuing with our medium-term project of closing the gap between regular outgoings and regular income, a gap which has to be covered by bequest income. This September we are due to have an increase of the subscription rate, the final one of three bi-annual increases. This will increase the rate for those paying by Direct Debit to £31.50: if it had kept pace with inflation since 2003, when the sub was raised to £20, it would be £31.86.

We are not looking to go beyond this approximate level, and in the context of the epidemic we have decided to delay this increase for existing members until the New Year. Most readers, therefore, will be renewing this December at last year’s rate.

Merely a recommendation

Various bishops, and the Bishops’ Conference website, have published documents telling us that Holy Communion ‘must’ be received in the hand. The status of these documents is obscure, and in any case no bishop can forbid the reception of Holy Communion on the Tongue, even in the Ordinary Form, and even during an epidemic (the precedent here being Swine Flu in 2009). Furthermore, the Government guidance on the question is merely a ‘recommendation’.

"What do they mean, He looks and speaks like a holy prophet? I am a holy prophet."

From Last Cracks in Legendary Cloisters by Brother Choleric (Dom Hubert van Zeller OSB), 1960.

As for the Extraordinary Form, where Holy Communion cannot be distributed except on the tongue, it tends not to be mentioned in these guidelines, any more than are the Eastern Rites where Holy Communion must be administered by intinction, using a spoon.

The Society’s position, which I recommend to readers, is if priests judge that it is still not opportune to distribute Holy Communion at the Traditional Mass for a little while longer, we must support them, bearing this cross with patience, knowing that the question of hygiene is not the only one at issue.

I would like to express, at the same time, how outrageous this situation is. There is now a long list of medical experts who have stated that reception on the Tongue is no less hygienic than in the Hand. The Government is not forcing the issue, and our bishops well know that there are limits to episcopal authority. Parish Priests, and even the laity, have rights under Canon Law. This appears to be of no interest or concern to those responsible for many of these documents, because they are expecting it to be enforced, not by due process of law, but by those familiar, informal pressures and incentives which make the clerical world go round.

For ten years we have witnessed the public scandal of clerical sexual abuse. As Catholics, we know that lying behind that scandal, is one of much longer standing, which has been less exposed to public view: of the clerical abuse of power. Of complaints being ignored, of procedures not being followed, of documents from the Holy See being filed in the bin. This has been going on in the context of our requests for the Extraordinary Form, of what is taught in Seminaries, of liturgical abuses, and of course of sexual abuse itself. It is clear that the culture of lofty superiority to the rules, to the views of the laity, to natural justice, and even to Divine Law, has not yet been defeated. We should not take seriously claims that the issue of the abuse of minors has been seriously addressed until those wielding authority in the hierarchical Church recognise that they do so within a system of rights and obligations, and for the good of the whole Church.