From The Archives

From The Corpus Canada Journal Archives

In the last issue of The Journal, we reprinted from the first issue of the Corpus Canada Journal an article by Tom Ratterman. However, we did not give the date of the first issue. Since then, readers have written to ask for it. The first issue was published in July 1989.

From the September 1989 issue of the Corpus Canada Journal, we take the following:

1. Priestless Masses--At What Cost? by William Marrevee
One can only maintain that a communion service, whatever form it takes, is a treacherous undertaking. It builds on a development in eucharistic practice that, while legitimate in some respects, is fraught with potential pitfalls, for it forces the taking of Communion into an even more isolated position. It obscures, moreover, what the community does not simply have the right to do but must do on the day of the Lord (Sunday), namely celebrate the Eucharist with which its very identity as Body of Christ is inherently bound up. It is the sacramental celebration of the Lord’s Death and Resurrection from which the Church, in the final analysis, lives and not the presence of Christ in the consecrated bread and wine, however much the latter is an integral part of the former... every attempt must be made to avoid giving the impression that the communion service is a readily available substitute for the celebration of the Eucharist.

2. Catholics Won’t Settle for Half a Mass by Tim Unsworth
After a colourful outdoor Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul ll, I wandered around the enormous St. Peter’s Square looking for people who spoke English. In time, I found a priest who could have talked me into the next century. A nice fellow, I thought. But he had a few slates loose.
He told me that he came from a small diocese in one of those rectangular states in the Midwest. He had been pastor of a one-priest parish for at least a decade. Now, he was enjoying a three month sabbatical to study, to rest, and to pray.
Out of curiosity, I asked him who was minding the store. “Oh, that’s easy,” he said, “I consecrated a three-month supply of hosts before I left.”
Well, there it was. A gentle but faintly nutty priest had carried the new priest-less liturgy regulations to one of its logical conclusions. For the rest of the afternoon, I strolled through the beautiful Vatican Museum, haunted by the spectre of a tubful of sacred hosts somewhere in the back of a rural church.
In mid-1988, the Vatican released “Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest,” an 18 page liturgical manual that codifies what already exists in many countries: priestless parishes. It explains how to train lay people to carry out a liturgy of the Word and perform a brief...service using preconsecrated hosts. It also states that a homily may be given, but like the hosts, must be prepared by a priest.
With all due respect, the directive is as nutty as the priest I met outside St. Peter’s. It’s just another example of an institution that is trying to preserve itself as an institution while it is destroying itself as Church.

3. Eparch Isidore Borecky pleads with the pope for married priests
(excerpt from a letter to Pope John Paul ll, April 15, 1989 protesting Vatican attempts to prohibit married Ukrainian Catholic clergy from exercising ministry in Canada)
Over the last century, the attempt to impose celibacy has not succeeded, but it has provoked at least three schisms in North America, as follows:
1. The schism led by Archpriest Alexis Toth commencing in Minneapolis in 1891. The vast majority of members of the Russian Orthodox Churches in the U.S. and Canada are descended from former Catholics who left the Church through this movement;
2. The schism which formed the Ukrainian Greek-Orthodox Church of Canada during and after the First World War. Except for new immigrants, virtually all the members of this denomination are former Catholics and their descendants;
3. The celibacy schism of the 1930’s in the U.S. led by Father (later Metropolitan) Orestes Chornock, which resulted in the formation of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Diocese and its reception into the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople.
These schisms were attended by acrimonious court battles, disgraceful public spectacles which resulted in many enduring wounds to the body of Christ, the Church, and serious scandals to the detriment of the Catholic cause. They are still a major obstacle to ecumenical relations....
Hierarchs of Ukraine have been ordaining married priests and sending them to us for a century, from Metropolitan Sylvester Cardinal Sembratovynch, through Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky, Joseph Cardinal Slipyj (who in Rome itself ordained at least 46 such priests for the diaspora without any objection from the Holy See) and now the present Eastern Catholic hierarchs in Ukraine.
At the very least, Your Holiness, surely it is not improper to ask for an explanation of this complete innovation. Since Pope Pius Xll established the Eparch of Toronto we have received married priests who were ordained in Ukraine or elsewhere in Europe on the instruction of Cardinal Tisserant, and until today there has been no objection.
How, When, and Why has this policy changed?
Any attempt to prevent the priests ordained in Ukraine from exercising the sacred ministry would provoke an immediate and vehement protest from the faithful, and even from the reverend clergy. These priests have been received with very great joy, and they are carrying out much needed pastoral work. Suddenly interrupting that work now would do irreparable harm to the peace of the Church here.