After reading Father Richard McBrien’s column “Perpetual eucharistic adoration,” I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.
He attempted to defend a secular, non-Christian reporter who wrote about eucharistic adoration. Fr. McBrien says it is unfortunate the reporter constantly refers to the eucharistic host as a wafer, but that distinction would be lost on non-Catholics and most Catholics as well. He insinuates that most Catholics are not educated in their Catholicity or lack the faith required for belief in the Real Presence. Later, he states “now that most Catholics are literate and well-educated … there is no need for extraneous eucharistic devotions. The Mass provides all that a Catholic needs sacramentally and spiritually.”
Oh, really? Which are we, Fr. McBrien, well-educated or ignorant of the truths the Catholic Church teaches concerning the Real Presence?
Don’t tell the Missionaries of Charity that eucharistic devotion is unnecessary. Mother Teresa had been known to tell her Sisters to return to adoration when she perceived a troubled or uncharitable countenance in one of them. These women were following her example of serving Christ through Calcutta’s dying and destitute. Do we need that peace, power, source of strength and abiding joy any less than these good nuns?
The last sentence of Fr. McBrien’s column: “Eucharistic adoration, perpetual or not, is a doctrinal, theological, and spiritual step backward, not forward” is in opposition to the teachings found in the “Catechism of the Catholic Church.” Please look there and you’ll find: “The Church and the world have a great need for Eucharistic worship.
“Jesus awaits me in this sacrament of love. Let us not refuse the time to go to meet him in adoration, in contemplation full of faith and open to making amends for the serious offenses and crimes of the world. Let our adoration never cease.”
Holly Martin
Sigourney
