Happy Homestarloween!

Ask Dr. Breen.

Dear Dr. Breen,

The Congregation of the Sacraments and Divine Worship has stated that "No priest, deacon, acolyte, or extraordinary minister of Holy Communion may refuse a communicant Communion on the tongue." This has been reinforced by the Pope and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

My question is this: why has Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Bakersfield, CA, seen fit to deny me Communion on the tongue?

-A Concerned Communicant

Dear Concerned,

Thank you for writing, Concerned. Of course your question touches on one of the basic sacramental impulses, with all its associated hopes and fears for the future of the Universal Church on Earth. I also detect some unspoken questions. Does Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish really know what's best for us? What gives them the right to make this kind of decision for the communicant? Will they ever allow us to receive Communion on the tongue again?

Allow me to address the anxieties underlying your concerns, rather than try to answer every possible question you might have left unvoiced. First, let us consider the fact that for the first time ever, as a species, radical liturgical changes are in our reach. This simple fact has far-reaching implications. It requires radical rethinking and revision of our sacramental imperatives. It also requires planning and forethought that run in direct opposition to our liturgical pre-sets.

I find it helpful at times like these to remind myself that our true enemy is Doctrine. Doctrine was our mother when we were an infant Church. Doctrine coddled us and kept us safe in those hardscrabble years when we formed our beliefs and saw our first martyrs roast in a meager fire and started painting icons upon the catacomb walls. But inseparable from Doctrine is its dark twin, Orthodoxy. Doctrine is inextricably bound to unreasoning impulses, and today we clearly see its true nature. Doctrine has just become aware of its irrelevance, and like a cornered beast, it will not go down without a bloody fight. Doctrine would inflict a fatal injury on our Church. Doctrine creates its own oppressors, and bids us rise up against them. Doctrine tells us that the unknown is a threat, rather than an opportunity. Doctrine slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress. Doctrine, therefore, must be expunged. It must be fought tooth and nail, beginning with the basest of sacramental urges: The urge to receive Communion on the tongue.

We should thank Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish for giving us respite from this overpowering force. They have given a command and exorcised our demons in a single stroke. They have given us the strength we never could have summoned to overcome this compulsion. They have given us purpose. They have turned our eyes toward the stars.

Let me assure you that Communion on the tongue will be allowed on the day that we have mastered ourselves...the day we can prove we no longer need it. And that day of transformation, I have it on good authority, is close at hand.

-Dr. Wallace Breen

Costume Party?


In case you can't read the poster because of my poor excuse for a phone's image quality, the poster says "Halloween costume party courtesy ...." I can't help but think based on the poster that it might be less like a costume party and more like amateur night at the Kitten Club.

Blah blah abortion, pop culture. Let's talk about something really important.

My baby! (Who is, by the way, cuter than yours.)

Fingers Omnomnomnom

moar funny pictures

(In response to Sarah Silverman's laughably ignorant video, in which she claims that the Pope should sell the Vatican to feed the poor.)

Content, Shmontent.

Time for the third-lowest form of blogging: a link without commentary! (Just above YouTube videos and Lolcats.)

This has been circulating the pro-life blogosphere. An abortionist describes aborting an 18-week fetus while she herself was 18 weeks pregnant:

With my first pass of the forceps, I grasped an extremity and began to pull it down. I could see a small foot hanging from the teeth of my forceps. With a quick tug, I separated the leg. Precisely at that moment, I felt a kick - a fluttery "thump, thump" in my own uterus. It was one of the first times I felt fetal movement. There was a leg and foot in my forceps, and a "thump, thump" in my abdomen. Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes - without me - meaning my conscious brain - even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling - a brutally visceral response - heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life. Doing second trimester abortions did not get easier after my pregnancy; in fact, dealing with little infant parts of my born baby only made dealing with dismembered fetal parts sadder.

The article is an interesting read.

QFT: "I thought to myself how bizarre it was that I could have legally dismembered this fetus-now-newborn if it were inside its mother's uterus - but that the same kind of violence against it now would be illegal, and unspeakable."

Her world view is somewhat depressing. Dare I call it pagan? Her idea that denying a woman an abortion is violence against her, but performing the abortion is horrible violence against the baby.... It's as if violence is an unavoidable truth, an evil to which there is no alternative, and that we live in a world with no hope of ever achieving peace. There is something very sorrowful about that. But I suppose that's what a world without Christ is. As Tolkien understood it in The Lord of the Rings, prior to the incarnation, there was never any hope of lasting peace. "Only a fool's hope."

Ok that was, in fact, commentary. Fifth-lowest form of blogging (above baby pictures).