Saturday, November 11, 2017

Intinction

From a visitor:
Before the Body and Blood of Christ was made available under both species to everyone assisting Mass after Vatican II, intinction was used to do so for special occasions. Parishes simply did not have the extra communion chalices and accoutrements required until the provision was made to allow it and parishes began implementing the change. Now, because the Body and Blood is regularly available under both species in every Mass via multiple chalices, intinction is considered an onerous way to meet the same end and less desirable for the reason you mentioned. I’m sure you can get the exact rubrics for intinction from the USCCB or the General Instructions for the Roman Missal (GIRM) but I don’t think that is really the issue with these parishes.

I think honestly, most of the Catholics drawn to the old school type rituals propagated by the Ordinariate, both those celebrating the Mass and those assisting at Mass, are big fans of the traditions of kneeling at an altar rail and receiving communion on the tongue. The USCCB has made it clear that communion cannot be denied to a communicant if they wish to receive the host reverently in their hand or on their tongue nor can it be denied to a communicant if they wish to receive standing or kneeling even if no one else in the parish receives that way.

Priests like Fr. Phillips can use intinction to ENSURE that all communicants must kneel and must receive on their tongue because any other way would be messy and sacrilegious. It is sort of a passive-aggressive way to prevent altogether the need for extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist and for the receiving under both species separately. In short, it circumvents the intentions of the USCCB through a technicality. I would say this is another example of why Archbishop Garcia-Siller thought Atonement seemed to be “separate and not just unique”, from the rest of the archdiocese.

This also raises the question of how Anglican both intinction and chapel veils actually are. In my 30 years as an Episcopalian, I attended mass at four Los Angeles parishes and probably a dozen others while traveling, these representing high, low, and broad-church. The only instruction I had in my confirmation class in 1981 was to receive kneeling and on the hand (or standing if unable to kneel). Intinction was something I very rarely saw, and only after the AIDS epidemic became a major issue -- but most understood this was false delicacy, since the alcohol in the wine kills any germs. TEC Bp Bruno only normalized it here in the early 2000s. I don't believe it was ever done at St Mary of the Angels.

By the same token, I never saw chapel veils as an Episcopalian. I very rarely see them as a diocesan Catholic, although our parish is fairly traditional, retaining an altar rail and statues, though communicants always receive standing. Latin is used on special occasions. I would say that women who wear chapel veils in diocesan parishes tend to come from backgrounds where they are traditional, especially Latino. They are not an Anglican practice, at least as I've seen it in the US.

As a result, OCSP parishes who maintain these practices really aren't preserving "precious treasures of the Anglican spiritual patrimony". Even in the rare cases where people wanted intinction, as eventually normalized by Bp Bruno, it was voluntary, signified by leaving the host in the palm, when the priest or deacon with the chalice would then pick it up, dip it in the chalice him or herself, and place it on the communicant's tongue. There was no special set of intinction vessels in use. So this isn't even the Anglican practice.

So let me see -- the "old school type rituals propagated by the Ordinariate" aren't very Anglican and are based on recent practices in any case, including very recent revisions of the novus ordo mass to include quasi-archaic language. The only really Anglican part of this is letting people fancy they're something other than what they are!