Rome denounces lay people saying Mass

by Christopher Howse LAY PEOPLE'S attempts to celebrate Mass must be denounced "as completely foreign to the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice and offensive to the community of the Church" the Vatican congregation for doctrine says this week in a letter endorsed by the Pope. addressed to all bishops.
The condemnation follows reports of communities, left for some time with no priest, electing their own president for celebrating the Eucharist.
This is the idea Fr Edward Schillebeeckx, the controversial Dominican theologian, expounded on his last tour of Britain.
The point made by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is that the priestly ministry differs essentially from the "common priesthood" of the laity. In other words it takes more than election by the local community to enable a man to turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ in the Mass.
The Congregation isolates what it calls an error which has sometimes attracted practical expression. This claims that any community of Christians has the powers given by Christ to his Apostles. The local community, according to this idea, may mandate a member to preside over it to perform the worship of the Eucharist.
The letter to bishops is couched in familiarly stilted Vaticanese, but its message is cleat and strong. It defines the error it is trying to stamp out as the opinion "that the power to confect the sacrament of the Eucharist is not necessarily connected with the sacramental ordination."
The letter criticises those "who cite isolated tests of Scripture in opposition to living tradition, in trying to justify new structures." It recognises that all the Baptised share the same dignity before God, but points out that from the Church's earliest days there have been "specific apostolic powers deriving front the sacrament of Holy Orders."
It appeals to the authority of the Fourth Lateran Council, an ecumenical .council called in 1215.
Communities who have tried to celebrate Mass without a priest have tended to he those left without a priest through persecution or the general shortage of vocations.
The Congregation says that they are not left without grace even if they cannot hear Mass. "Through their desire for the sacrament in union with the Church, no matter how far they may be physically, they are intimately and really united to her and therefore receive the fruits of the sacrament."