Ending up in hell

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

 

LifeSiteNews reported (June 25) a retired archbishop in Poland warning his brother bishops and fellow priests that they’ll “end up in hell” for forcing the faithful to receive Holy Communion only in the hand in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Archbishop Jan Pawel Lenga accused priests who insist on offering communion only in the hand as “being ignorant of history and lacking in respect toward the Blessed Sacrament.” His statement was made earlier in a March 21 video interview for the Polish Internet TV during the early days of the Church’s response to the pandemic.

“Such priests do not respect that which is sacred and force others to violate their consciences. Poland is still zealous in the faith, and Polish people do not want to take Communion in the hand and standing up, like in the degenerate western world,” said Lenga.  “The coronavirus is being used to break people’s consciences.”

In the Philippines, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines has also directed that until it orders otherwise, the communion of the faithful will be received by the hand and that communion with the mouth or tongue is prohibited. I asked a priest whether he would give communion by the mouth and he said that is not allowed.

Archbishop Lenga issued a stern warning to bishops and priests who insist on administering the Eucharist solely in the hand, “I am calling on them to stop this practice. We will be no different than the Protestants, in Germany and elsewhere in the world. That is where this evil is leading to.”

He claimed Church leaders had abandoned the faithful during a time of need. “Where are the bishops? Where are the Cardinals? Where are all the Church hierarchy usually so self-confident and important? They are hidden away, having left the people alone.”

“The bishops closed down all churches, no Masses are available,” he lamented.  “This says a lot about bishops and priests who have separated themselves from the faithful, as if they didn’t exist.”

Lenga compared bishops and priests who are missing in action to the doctors and nurses working on the front lines to combat the virus, risking their own health and sometimes even their lives.

“The priests ran away from all this.  They just want to live long,” said Lenga. “That shows they are far from the true faith, and far from God.”

Lenga said that these priests have lost the sense of the sacred and have become nothing more than “administrators.”  They tell others what to do but do not really respect Christ as God.

“Don’t just mindlessly listen to the government and do whatever they say,” the archbishop said.  “You are ready to deny Jesus and destroy everything. There is a panicked fear of death everywhere, instead of the fear of Judgement Day, or God’s punishments, which will come!”

Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments stressed that Communion is “not a right or a duty” but “a gift that we receive freely from God and that we must welcome with veneration and love.” The response to the privation of the Eucharist “cannot be but desecration,” he said. “This really is a matter of faith. If we believe, we cannot treat it unworthily.”

In the face of some parishes and dioceses where both Communion and confession have been suspended, Cardinal Sarah said, “nobody has the right to stop” a priest from celebrating the sacraments, which “must be respected.” Even if it is not possible to attend Masses, “the faithful can ask to be confessed and receive Communion.”

The cardinal also warned about “getting used to” only following Masses on the television. “He is flesh and blood, not virtual reality. The priest has to look at God, otherwise, he gets used to looking at the camera, as if it were a show.”

“We cannot go on like this,” he said.

“It should not surprise us,” he said. “The devil strongly attacks the Eucharist because it is the heart of the life of the Church. The heart of the problem is the crisis of faith in the priesthood. If priests are aware of what the Mass is and what the Eucharist is, certain ways of celebrating or certain hypotheses about Communion would not even come to mind. Jesus cannot be treated like this.”