Everything is kept in the sacristy. It’s kind of like the backstage for the altar. It’s where the priests’ vestments are kept, linens for the altar, all kinds of stuff. There’s nothing especially sacred about it – it’s just a space in the church.
Quite the opposite. The consecration has no expiration date. Given that Catholics believe that consecrated hosts (and wine) are the actual body (and blood) of Christ, and must be treated with the appropriate reverence, priests are careful not to consecrate any more hosts than they believe will be necessary at any given time. Any leftover consecrated hosts aren’t returned to the sacristy, but are stored in the tabernacle on the altar.
I think you’re OK (although I have no idea how old you are – the rules may have been different in the pre-Vatican II church).
From the Code of Canon Law: “One who has received the blessed Eucharist may receive it again on the same day only within a eucharistic celebration in which that person participates, without prejudice to the provision of can. 921 §2.”
I think you’re not supposed to receive communion twice at the same mass. But at separate masses, not really a problem.
It would have been a bit before pre-Vatican ll, or maybe it was just a mean nun power tripping on a little Mexican girl. But thanx for checking on it for me.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding sacristy. By sacristy, do you mean the room where priests dress up and where vestments and unconsecrated wafers and wine are stored, or the box within which consecrated Hosts are stored? I meant the room. M-W.com lists the box as being the sacrarium and says that sacrarium can be used to mean sacristy (the room), but gives only the room as a possible definition of sacristy (that is, it does not list sacristy as meaning the box).
A sagrarium isn’t big enough for a priest to enter; a sacristy is too big for a priest to carry.
Could this “Wafer Consecration/Denigration” conversation be moved to a new thread, please?
I don’t go up to the communion rail when i attend a Catholic funeral or wedding, I just stay in my seat. I was told only people who made their first communion were supposed to receive communion or people in good standing in the church,or with out a mortal sin; excommunicated Catholics were not to receive either, that is what excomunnications is about.
Either remain sitting , or if the pews are tight, get up, file out, and circle back around to enter the other side.
Getting back on topic, it seems that most of those that disagree with some of the fundamental teachings of the Catholic church still wish to consider themselves to be culturally Catholic. To those of you that feel that way, do you believe it is possible for the church someday to be more in line with your currently held beliefs, or do you think it is a lost cause and that a “Cultural Catholic” is as close as you will ever be?
There are issues on which I disagree with Catholic teaching. But I don’t think my disagreement on those particular issues puts me outside the fold. With regard to these issues, I think it is possible, if unlikely, that the Church may come closer to what I believe.
But if I were to claim that the Eucharist was merely symbolic, I don’t think I could call myself a Catholic anymore. A Christian, certainly, but not a Catholic. If I were to decide that the Resurrection didn’t really happen in a physical sense, I might be able to call myself a Christian, but again, not a Catholic. And if I were to decide that there is no God, I couldn’t even call myself a Christian.
I am so long gone from the whole thing that I’m not even culturally Catholic in any sense. Cut all ties to it, left it all behind, and moved on ages ago. If I were still trying to maintain some sort of Catholic identity, with the hard swerve to the right these days, I don’t know how I could deal with the tension and contradictions. Seems much preferable to me to make a clean break and be done with it.
But you have to give the devil his due, so to speak, because the way I was taught by the nuns back in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement, they raised me on a very strong commitment to social justice. Anti-racist, anti-bigotry, anti-nuclear missiles, pro-working class, pro-poor peoples. We were singing Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and other leftist protest songs at Mass! Those days are so long gone, they’re practically not even a memory any longer. The principles of social justice and anti-bigotry they raised me on I have kept throughout my life, and are still central to my values and worldview.
But the Church of my childhood ceased to exist ages ago. They were fine with progressive politics as long as it only concerned racial justice. Once Women’s Liberation and Gay Rights came along, they turned their back on social justice and progressive movements. They turned their back on the working class and poor, and got in bed with the capitalist bosses. They turned all reactionary until I couldn’t even recognize them any more. I’ve held true to the principles they brought me up on, while they’ve forgotten them and lost their own soul. I’ve kept to those principles and carried them forward into feminism and the LGBT movement. Our paths parted and we went our separate ways long ago. If I think about it, it still pains me that they’ve betrayed and forgotten about their own principles. But I really don’t look back much; I look forward. To a future where the Catholic Church is increasingly irrelevant and meaningless. Bye-bye.
I do not wish to consider myself culturally Catholic; but one can still reek of a religious culture they were raised in, even if they sever ties with that culture for some reason.
The church will never be in line with my spiritual beliefs; so for me, being a Catholic, is a total lost cause.
However, the good part is, that I am grateful for the many positive things that went into- who I am- that came from a Catholic upbringing.
And, as the defining religious culture of my family, and most of my old friends, Catholicism is fine and acceptable to me; and hopefully someday, my choice to have left the flock, will be fine and acceptable to them.
The latter.
I’ve never heard anyone claim a distinction between a Catholic and a “cultural Catholic” before. People I know claim to be Catholics, some other religion, or ex-Catholics. As an atheist myself, I am also an ex-Catholic (IMO).
One of my sisters, violates half the rules (it seems) every day, but she’s perfectly comfortable still claiming to be a Catholic.
She is what a lot of people call a “cafeteria Catholic”. This is the idea that the beliefs and rules of the Church are all optional (and in a sense they are, of course), and kind of laid out in a display case for members to pick and choose among.
The hierarchy of the Church seems not to be particularly interested in addressing this attitude.
And another thing. I was educated by Jesuits who place a high priority on science and philosophy, and on higher education in general. Learning was a big part of what Catholicism used to mean to me. Now the poster boy of American Catholicism is Santorum, who has thrown in his lot with the anti-science, anti-rationality yahoo crowd, and who even fucking disparages college education, playing to the moron vote. :rolleyes: Barf. What a sad joke it’s become.
As I see it, the Eucharist is only symbolic, Jesus didn’t cut his hand and bleed into a cup, nor did he give chunks of himself to eat. If a person tells it’s beloved"here" IS" my heart, take it and say we will never part , he is not actually giving his heart but it is symbolic. Because Jesus is quoted as saying,"Here “IS” my body take and eat or here “IS” my blood take it and drink, he wasn’t actually giving his blood or body,( The American Indians did make a cut in each person’s hand or arm and mingle the bloods so they could be called blood brothers),there was nothing that Jesus is said to have done that meant he actually gave his blood to drink or body to eat and it seems more symbolic than really doing as the RC translates it to mean.I know it is taught that it means it is truly the body and blood of Jesus,and changes with the words of the priest,but i doubt the fact of it. Unless Jesus meant that we are all made up of food and drink, and it is a necessity to sustain life.
I agree. I’d guess very few Catholics truly believe they are actually eating Jesus,
And, for the most part, Protestant Christians believe right along with you that the Eucharist is symbolic. There are exceptions (Anglicans, if we count them as Protestant, and Lutherans, or at least some Lutherans, and maybe some other).
But since the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a central and defining teaching of the Catholic Church, to disbelieve it pretty much makes one not a Catholic.
Violating the rules is different, I think, than disbelieve a central, defining teaching of the Church. We’re all sinners, after all. Breaking a rule is just that, as opposed to rejecting something absolutely essential to Catholicism.
Our adoption paperwork describes my husband and I as “cultural Catholics” - we joined a Unitarian Universalist church shortly thereafter and recommend that people adopting who have no religion do the same just in case they don’t come across a social worker like ours, open and savvy enough to write up our homestudy to not raise eyebrows. It just makes it easier. Apparently, atheist (or Wiccan) on adoption paperwork can just make the process a LOT harder - so although our social worker was aware, she coded it in such a way that it wasn’t a really a lie…but made things easier.