Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Bishop to priests: Hold the communion wine

Madison Catholic Bishop Robert Morlino has asked priests in the diocese to move toward using only bread during regular communion services, reserving the use of both bread and wine for more solemn or special occasions.

The change would be a significant departure from current U.S. Catholic custom, although bread-only is the norm in many other parts of the world. 

Madison would become only the second diocese in the country known to limit wine as a general policy.

However, diocesan officials stressed Monday that Morlino has not issued a directive to priests.

“He has not issued a formal mandate or set a fixed timeline but has asked pastors to exercise their own leadership to move in this direction,” said Monsignor James Bartylla, the diocese’s second-in-command.

Morlino first discussed the topic with priests at a retreat late last month, Bartylla said.

In a letter to priests Monday, Morlino said the change was needed to deepen laypeople’s reverence for the Eucharist, the Catholic term for communion. Catholics believe bread and wine, when consecrated by a priest, become the actual body and blood of Christ.

Morlino wrote that he has personally experienced occasions when reverence for the consecrated wine “is not being met.”

The use of consecrated wine at regular Masses often requires non-ordained parishioners to assist priests in helping with distribution. Some believe this increases the likelihood of unintentional mishandling of Christ’s blood through careless treatment, spillage or swilling.

“Wine, as a liquid, is much more subject to accidents and misuse than bread,” Bartylla said. “There are practical and logistical difficulties.”

Catholic teaching holds that only one form — consecrated bread or wine — is needed to receive Christ’s full person, while both together constitute “a fuller sign” of the Last Supper.

New direction

Hundreds of Catholics in Downtown Madison learned Sunday of the new direction. Monsignor Kevin Holmes, leader of the Cathedral Parish, a group of three Downtown congregations, wrote in Sunday’s bulletin that Morlino had given priests “considerable latitude” in implementing the change.

Morlino has suggested that the beginning of Advent (Nov. 27) “would be one plausible date to make the change,” Holmes wrote. That’s the same day the Catholic Church is fully implementing a new translation of its liturgical book.

Holmes couldn’t be reached Monday. Word among Catholics of the change is just starting to 
spread.

Travis Ganser, a member of the Cathedral Parish, said he supports the move.

“If you really believe what the church teaches and that the bishop is the church’s shepherd, then decisions like this are easy to accept,” he said.

Jim Andrews, a member of St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Beloit, called it “sort of a ridiculous idea.”

“This changes the meaning and traditions that I know,” he said. “The other practical ramification is there will be fewer laypeople involved in services.”

Expired permission?

In its early days, the Catholic Church distributed both bread and wine to the faithful, a tradition that continued for more than a millennium, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In 1415, the church decreed only bread would be distributed, with the use of wine reserved largely for clergy.

The Second Vatican Council in 1963 restored the use of both bread and wine at a bishop’s discretion. Morlino contends the council never intended it to become a regular practice.

Bartylla said communion under both forms is meant to be “exceptional rather than normative.”

Holmes, in his note to parishioners, said the widespread American practice of offering both forms began here under temporary special permission from the Vatican in 1975 and expired in 2005. U.S. bishops were denied an extension, he said.

Different views

That rationale for dropping wine was hotly debated Monday by Catholic scholars.

Anthony Ruff, a Benedictine monk and associate professor of theology at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., said the failure to get an explicit extension just means the universal rules of the church kick in.

“Nothing in the universal rules of the church requires the bishop to restrict both forms,” he said. “This decision is absolutely unnecessary. The bishop has full authority to allow communion under both forms at all Masses if he wishes.”

Ruff called the move “demoralizing to dedicated priests and lay ministers in the diocese.”

But Dennis Martin, a theology professor at Loyola University in Chicago, said any U.S. diocese routinely distributing both forms “is in violation of church rules.”

“A renewal was requested and not given,” Martin said. “I’m sorry, that sounds to me like a 
pretty deliberate and intentional statement of bread-only.”

He praised Morlino’s move as “quite reasonable and quite practical.”

Officials with the Madison diocese said examples of when both wine and bread might be used include marriage ceremonies, ordinations and occasions that are solemn in nature for the diocese or individual parishes.

Last month, the Phoenix Catholic Diocese announced it would stop offering wine at most Masses, becoming the first diocese in the country to make such a change and kicking up a controversy. 

No date for implementing the policy has been announced.