2022/11/28

67. The Holy Communion

Recently, I had the opportunity to see people kneeling to receive Communion at the Mass. The Mass was celebrated by a religious priest, so the way may have been the policy of the congregation to which he belongs. Prayer kneelers were set up at the end of the aisle by the wall of the chapel. The faithful who wish to receive Holy Communion on their tongues with their lips open in front of the priest go there and kneel to receive the Eucharist. Those who receive Communion with their hands line up in the centre aisle and receive the Eucharist standing up. This division of the way of receiving Communion made me realize something I had never thought of before.  

I have heard that the reason why the congregation receive Communion on their tongues opening their lips is that not a single particle of the Eucharist, the body of Christ, should fall to the ground and because some impious people may take the Eucharist home without eating it, and also, I heard the priest is responsible for these things. But the following words of Jesus testify that these concerns are needless. "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore" (Matthew 10:28-31). 

In addition, as discussed in the last issue, if every communicant proclaimed before the Eucharist, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16), the responsibility to receive the Eucharist correctly would rest with the communicant himself. It is a matter of course that communicants recognized by the Church, even children, are expected to behave responsibly before God. And they must be trained to do so (cf. Blog № 37). Once this is in place, it will become no longer necessary to receive Communion with open lips. The danger would rather lie with the priest himself, who sees people kneeling before him at every Mass with their lips open and tongues out. The priest who stands and looks down on these people is in danger of mistakenly thinking that the authority of the "priesthood" as "spiritual shepherds" who "are representatives of Christ" (Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 37) is his own. 

The lips are one of the most delicate organs of the human body. Therefore, any method of Communion in which the priest's fingers may touch the communicant's lips should be abandoned as soon as possible. Furthermore, among the congregation who receive Communion are women dressed with a plunging neckline and young people and children who innocently open their lively lips. These realities pose a graver danger to some priests. In his memoir, Daniel Pittet, whom I introduced in the blogs № 61 and № 62, prefacing his account by saying, "My words may be offensive at times," wrote: "[The priest] pulled his enlarged 'thing' out of his underwear and forcibly forced it into my mouth. It happened so fast. It was as if I was dreaming. Uncomfortably warm liquid overflew out of his 'thing,' and that was the end." The Church has an obligation to show its sincerity by removing all seeds of danger from its whole body in the face of these enormous numbers of victims.

Maria K. M.

 2022/11/21

66. True Humility

As we have discussed, the expression "bride of Christ" in the understanding of the Church found in the Vatican II documents does not fit God's desire to be the true parent of men. If comparing the Church to the "bride of Christ," our heavenly Father is as if he were the Father-in-law of the Church. This metaphor also affected Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, v. 7, 84 and 85). Then its influence was manifested in the words the priest recites with the congregation just before communion in the Mass celebrated according to the Roman Missal. 

The words are taken from the words of the centurion who was concerned about the illness of his son (servant) by which he humbly refused Jesus' offer, even though Jesus himself had said, "I will come and heal him" (cf. Matthew 8:5-13). The centurion's humility shows that he did not know God, the true parent of man. Jesus, who knew all the thoughts of men, saw the centurion as having the faith appropriate to the particular situation at this time, hearing the analogy he drew to refuse his offer because of humility. But the centurion's words are inappropriate for the faithful who call God their heavenly Father. That is because Jesus, at his last supper, taught them in the utmost display of divine humility, kneeling and washing the feet of his disciples. 

On this occasion, Peter said, "You shall never wash my feet", to which Jesus replied, "If I do not wash you, you have no part in me" (John 13:8). In the face of God's humility, man's humility would rather cut off his relationship with God. Indeed, the centurion's humility deprived his son (servant) and his family of the opportunity to encounter Jesus. In addition, if a believer wants to receive the Eucharist and nevertheless, following the centurion's humility, says, "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed," there will naturally come about contradiction. 

On one occasion, Jesus asked his disciples, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16). The words of Jesus that followed are filled with the joy of the son in honour of the Father: "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 16:17). These words revealed by the heavenly Father, the words of Peter, who was made blessed by Jesus, become the true words recited by the blessed people who were invited to the supper of the Lamb of God (cf. Revelation 19:9). They are the very words that the faithful should recite in the presence of the Eucharist. 

Jesus in the Eucharist still asks the faithful: "But who do you say that I am?" When they say in reply, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," Jesus, receiving these words revealed by the heavenly Father, will tell each of them: "I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).

Maria K. M.

 2022/11/14

65. The "Bride" and the Cognitive Distortion

The image of matrimony placed at the foundation for understanding the Church in the Vatican II documents is taken from the Book of Revelation too. As we have discussed, Revelation directs its trainees to the Mass through its training and the formation of the Holy Spirit. The Mass, which brings Jesus' last supper to the "present" and makes real the "Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19) once again, is the place where the sign of the "new covenant" (Luke 22:20) made between the Father, who is God, and the Son, who became man, is continued. Here the Church, as "my church" (Matthew 16:18) of Jesus, bears witness to this "new covenant," along with the Apostles who were present at the table of his last supper. That is why the "bride" in Revelation, with one exception, appears after chapter 19, where the Mass opens. Therefore, the "bride" in Revelation refers to this "new covenant" and its sign. That is also true of the "bride" used by John the Baptist as follows: "He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:29-30). John the Baptist, who compared himself to the "friend of the bridegroom," at this time thought of the "steward of the feast" of the scene of the wedding at Cana, found in the same Gospel of John, chapter 2. That is because John the Baptist must have heard the news of Jesus' first sign performed there. The following words, which the steward of the feast said to the bridegroom as he called him, were precisely what John the Baptist intended to say: "Every man serves the good wine first; and when men have drunk freely, then the poor wine; but you have kept the good wine until now" (John 2:10). John the Baptist understood the "good wine" as the "new covenant." So, he continued, "He must increase, but I must decrease." He placed himself on the side of the old covenant. In contrast, the Church, while calling God Father through Jesus Christ, took over the expression of the people who, unable to establish a parent-child bond with God through Solomon, compared the relationship between God and the people to that of a bridegroom and bride, or husband and wife, and imagined the bond of husband and wife to that with God (cf. blog № 59). In the Book of Wisdom, supposedly authored by Solomon, he wrote: "I loved her and sought her from my youth, and I desired to take her for my bride, and I became enamored of her beauty" (Book of Wisdom 8:2). To him, bride meant wisdom. He then "determined to take her to live with me" (Book of Wisdom 8:9). Solomon, when the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Ask what I shall give you" (I Kings 3:5), did not realize the very words of the Lord were the true wisdom. And he loved many foreign women and clung to them, disobeying the word of the Lord and following their gods (cf. I Kings 11:1-10). Solomon, like Adam the first human, was attracted to the mystery of motherhood that women possess (cf. Genesis 3:20) and sought the motherly wisdom that he, as a man, could not have (cf. Song of Songs 3:4,11; 6:9; 8:1,2,5; Book of Wisdom 7:12). Thus, a cognitive distortion occurred in Solomon, who mixed up the wisdom of God with that of men. Song of Songs describes the trading using silver in its final chapter (cf. Song of Songs 8:11-12). It has received the mark of the name of the beast (cf. blog№46).

Maria K. M.

 2022/11/07

64. Paul and Cognitive Distortions Part 2

Let us continue our discussion by examining the following expression from one of the Second Vatican Council texts: "In this way they [priests] profess themselves before men as willing to be dedicated to the office committed to them – namely, to commit themselves faithfully to one man and to show themselves as a chaste virgin for Christ and thus to evoke the mysterious marriage established by Christ, and fully to be manifested in the future, in which the Church has Christ as her only Spouse" (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, par. 16). This statement is taken from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, where he wrote: "I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ"(2 Corinthians 11:2). These words are a parable used by Paul to admonish the Corinthian community, wary of those whom he called "false apostles" (cf. 2 Corinthians 11:1-15). Behind his concern was his desire to manage to make them fulfil their promise to raise money for Jerusalem. He was clearly preoccupied with the issue. So, first of all, we need to consider Paul's peculiar situation when he wrote these words. Also, the bizarre expression, "betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin," is based on the patriarchal thinking of the time, making no sense at all in the present day. It was too easy a choice to incorporate such an expression directly into the most authoritative church documents of the second half of the 20th century bringing the conjugal image into the relationship between Christ and the Church. Marriage is essentially moving towards sexual union for the bridegroom and bride. If we take marriage into the Church teachings as a metaphor for the relationship between Christ and the Church, a sexual bias is inevitable in crucial situations. That is evident from the fact that, regarding the cases of sexual abuse by the priests, the bishops and the fellow priests concerned downplayed the seriousness of the situation and did not take decisive actions even when they became aware of the facts. In addition, the following expressions in the Vatican II documents show that the above-mentioned patriarchal ideology is being carried over even to the present day in the relationship between priests and the laity: "Let them, as fathers in Christ, take care of the faithful whom they have begotten by baptism and their teaching" (Lumen Gentium, par. 28); "The Christian faithful, for their part, should realize their obligations to their priests, and with filial love they should follow them as their pastors and fathers" (Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, par.9); "Thus they [priests] are apt to accept, in a broad sense, paternity in Christ" (Ibid., par. 16). Jesus, who gave Christians the "Lord's Prayer," admonished them saying, "And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9). Even though born as a man to fulfil the prophecy as Christ, Jesus came to the earth carrying the divine motherhood (cf. blog № 29, № 43). When Jesus compared himself just once to a "bridegroom," he likened his disciples to "wedding guests" (cf. Matthew 9:15). And Jesus specified who the disciples, the "wedding guests," were (cf. Matthew 12:49-50). In the scene of the wedding at Cana, Jesus himself was there as a wedding guest, along with his mother, brothers, and disciples (cf. John 2:1-12). The sign that Jesus performed here, turning water into fine wine, was fulfilled by Mary and Jesus precisely because of their mother-son relationship.

Maria K. M.

 2022/10/31

63. Paul and Cognitive Distortions

Over the last few issues, we have discussed how the Catholic Church of today has understood the Church itself and priests from the perspective of "cognitive distortions." These discussions have been done with some awareness of the Synodal Journey initiative, which is currently underway worldwide. This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. So, in this issue, I would like to continue my previous reflections going back to the documents of the Council. First, I would like to take up the expression from Lumen Gentium, which I also introduced in this blog №59: "Christ loves the Church as His bride, having become the model of a man loving his wife as his body" (Lumen Gentium, section 7). This expression is taken from Paul's letter to Ephesians (5:25-28). Here, Paul, while taking a form of a recommendation to husband and wife, attempted to explain the relationship between Christ and the Church by likening it to the relationship between wife and husband, but in the meanwhile, he realized his reasonings did not make sense (cf. Ephesians 5:22-33). When he said, "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24), the word "his father and his mother" must have struck a chord with him. So, Paul abruptly cuts his discourse short, saying, "This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband" (Ephesians 5:32-33). He then quickly shifts the subject to the relationship between children and their fathers (cf. Ephesians 6:1-4). However, the expression in Lumen Gentium applied the relationship between wife and husband directly to the relationship between Christ and the Church. A cognitive distortion has occurred. The relationship between a wife and a husband becomes that of a mother and a father through their child. Unlike that, the relationship between Christ and the Church becomes that of mother and child without any intermediary, according to the following words of Jesus: "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Matthew 12:49-50). "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven" signifies not only those who gather around Christ, but also Jesus himself, who said: "For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me" (John 6:38). Christ is the brother, sister and mother of the Church. So, the community of Christians gathered at the Mass consists of the priest, a mother, and the faithful, brothers and sisters as her children. The priest becomes a mother who, in collaboration with the Holy Spirit, asks in the name of Jesus that the bread and wine may become the body and blood of Christ through the Word. The faithful become children who hear the Word through the mother and take and eat the Body of Christ with faith. Therefore, at the last supper, Jesus, who instituted the Eucharist and was about to give birth to the Church on the Cross, said to the Apostles, who were to fulfil the same duty as his: "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:7-8).

Maria K. M.

 2022/10/24

62. Cognitive Distortions

In the last issue, I introduced the memoir by Daniel Pittet, describing the sexual abuse he suffered from a priest during his childhood. He was sexually abused by the priest for the first time when he was nine years old, which lasted for four years. He decided to press charges 20 years later when he discovered he was not the only victim. Research on sexual offences involving child victims is particularly advanced in Europe and America. It has been shown that these sex offenders have distinctive sexual cognitive distortions. Sexual cognitive distortions refer to the specific attitudes and beliefs that promote sexual offending, including acceptance of sexually aggressive behaviour towards the victim, downplaying of its problematic nature and the severity of the damage, and the tendency to attribute responsibility for it to the victim's words and actions and their own psychological state. In the afterword to the memoir mentioned above, we will find a record of the interview with the priest, the perpetrator, conducted by the collaborator in writing this book the year before its publication. Reading what the priest tells here, it is surprising to see in him the above characteristics of a sex offender's sexual cognitive distortions. The fact that in most cases, including the case in this book, the Bishop and the perpetrator's fellow priests downplayed the seriousness of the abuse when they became aware of it and did not take decisive action tells us that these cognitive distortions were to some extent shared among the clergy in the area as a whole. In this light, the cause of the cognitive distortions should be attributed not only to the personal problems of the perpetrators but also their priestly formation process. This year, a person who attended the lifelong vow ceremony at a convent said that she was surprised and felt an ethical discomfort when a priest said in his congratulatory speech, "A priest represents Christ, and you are Christ's bride, so you are also my bride." I have read the "Directory on the Ministry and Life of Priests" issued by the Congregation for the Clergy in 1994 by chance, and I realised that these problems come from the fact that priests are formed amid the following expressions. "… the Church, his Body and his Bride, called by his Spouse to be a sign and instrument of redemption"; "Similar to the Bishop, they [the priests] participate in that spousal dimension in relation to the Church. The priest, who 'in the individual local communities of the faithful makes the Bishop present, so to speak, to whom they are united with a faithful and great spirit' must be faithful to the Bride and almost like living icons of Christ the Spouse render fruitful the multi-form donation of Christ to his Church"; "He [the priest] is disposed to give his life for it [the community] … in order to render it, in the image of the Church, Spouse of Christ, always more beautiful … This spousal dimension of the priest as pastor will help him guide his community …" Bringing the conjugal image into the relationship between Christ and the Church in this way and asking a priest to take on the two conflicting roles - that of a husband facing the Church at the same time as being incorporated into the Church, the wife - would potentially create confusion in his identity and cause sexual cognitive distortions. The only time Jesus compared himself to a "bridegroom" is in the dialogue about fasting (cf. Matthew 9:15). So, to make the idea of Jesus here likening his disciples to wedding guests alive, we need fresh wineskins for new wine (cf. Matthew 9:17).

Maria K. M.

 2022/10/17

61. "I AM."

The Catholic Church scandal, sparked by a January 2002 report by the United States newspaper, The Boston Globe, quickly spread around the world, uncovering years of concealment. Its flames show no sign of abating even now, more than 20 years later. Revelation 18 seems as if it prophesied this current state of the Church in the 21st century: "As she glorified herself and played the wanton, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning. Since in her heart she says, 'A queen I sit, I am no widow, mourning I shall never see,' so shall her plagues come in a single day, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she shall be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her" (Revelation 18:7-8). For some time, I have sensed in the cases of sexual abuse by clergy a kind of problem of spirituality coming from the depths of history. Eventually, I encountered the training of Revelation and, while practising it, blindly started writing this blog, encouraged by the angel's words, "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near" (Revelation 22:10). In the process, I realised that, unexpectedly, this book is looking at the root of the problems of the contemporary society. I have read a memoir by Daniel Pittet, published in 2017, for which Pope Francis wrote a foreword. It states that around 1968, when he was being sexually abused by a priest, the Church and the state in the area where he lived were united as one, so the Church had immense power, and people lived according to the rules set by the Church. The fact that these spectacular tragedies could be covered up for so long must surely be because of the great power and authority connected to each other. But this is not the only problem. There seems to be a cognitive distortion lurking in these problems. In the Gospel of John, we find the arguments between Jesus and the Jews who believed in him (cf. John 8:31-47). Here, in the presence of Jesus, who speaks to them with truth, it is revealed that the Jews recognised two objects, Abraham and God, as their father at the same time. In addition, they also had a spirituality that viewed God as their spouse while saying God was their father. The Church has inherited this spirituality as a tradition. She calls out to God, "Our Father who art in heaven", and at the same time says that Christ, who gave birth to the Church as God, the true Parent, loves her as his bride (cf. blog № 59). The contradictions and ethical discrepancies here will cause stress over the years, even unconsciously, and eventually, run the risk of causing cognitive distortions. The above arguments between Jesus and the Jews who believed in him ended in a way as follows: "Jesus said to them, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.' So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple" (John 8:58-59).

Maria K. M.

[Notice] The expression "God of no information" in № 59 was an error for "the no information of God," which I have already corrected.