I was wondering what posters think about the Catholic forum Suscipe Domine. I have been aware of the site for a while and have considered joining but I do not know if the site is good for a person like me. Is it bad like fisheaters or Catholic answers or is it more traditional?

Quote from: Sbyvl

Quote from: Matto

I was wondering what posters think about the Catholic forum Suscipe Domine. I have been aware of the site for a while and have considered joining but I do not know if the site is good for a person like me. Is it bad like fisheaters or Catholic answers or is it more traditional?

They calumnate their members (See: https://sbyvl.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/4172/), whilst permitting feminists to roam free, banning those who oppose them (See: http://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=10447.0 and http://www.suscipedomine.com/forum/index.php?topic=10525.0).  These are just two examples of their ridiculousness.  There are plenty more.

I notice that you have fewer then 10 posts on CI.  Have you come here for no other purpose than to continue your war of words with the SD moderators, which you have been waging on your own forum and blog?

They permanently banned me for saying that St. Pius X made some destructive changes to the liturgy and that ultramontanism has harmed the Church - two facts that cannot be reasonably denied with the hindsight of Vatican II.

Sacraments I am sure are supposed to be life changing events, rather than a simple reward for turning up. From very early on until that old modernist Pope St Pius X changed things - those people who are anxious about Francis would have been  apoplectic about Pio. He not merely  changing the Apostolic order of the sacraments - Confirmation after Communion - but wanting to introduce not merely frequent but even daily Communion. Communion not just for Holy monks and hermits who had proved themselves in ascetical discipline, in long vigils and depth of prayer but on a regular basis for those who had only recently attained the age of reason and probably hadn't yet learnt to use it. It was madness!

For almost 1,800 years, ever since Paul had written to the Corinthian suggesting that the Holy Eucharist kills, and is dangerous, and indeed can both give Salvation but also Condemnation and death, Communion was something which most sane people took part in rarely, to the point where the Council of the Lateran made annual reception a precept of the Church, even then pastorally minded bishops seemed not to insist too strongly, except in the case of imminent death.

One of the nonsenses spread abroad by those 1970s liturgists is that in that mythical period ‘the early Church’ people were receiving not merely regularly but frequently, in all probability every Sunday, I think the evidence for that is very flimsy!

The point is of course that the sacraments are Life Giving Events including, maybe especially so, Holy Communion, Pius’ reforms made them mundane and lead to the abuses we have today where just because you are whatever years old or in Miss X’s class, or at Mass you receive the Communion, Confession or Comfirmation, So now the Sacraments are received frequently they have come to mean very little in the life of the Church or the spiritual development of its members, their power to impart Grace or Salvation hardly figures in contemporary catechesis, the liturgy has become not so much a mystical meeting with Heaven but 'a celebration of the community'.

So many of the ills of today’s Church can be laid directly at the door of this most interfering of Popes, the most important being that Sacraments do not change lives. Of course in the teeth of all that his predecessors had upheld down the ages, he thought he was being 'pastoral' - God preserve us!

I encourage people to come to daily Mass, I celebrate Mass daily, I think going to Holy Communion daily is a good thing but it was not always thus.

St Pius X, that arch-innovator, not only changed the order of the sacraments placing First Confession and First Holy Communion before Confirmation but also made the daily celebration of Mass - and consequently the daily reception of Holy Communion - for priests a norm. Until then daily attendance at Mass was usual but the reception of Holy was not. There are older priests in my diocese who remember ancient priests in my diocese in the 1950s who only celebrated Mass on a Sunday, or when they were bound to do so by the Code of Canon Law because of piety not impiety, trusting in the judgement of the Church rather than their own feelings of worthiness or otherwise.

St Theresa of Lisieux was one of the few nuns in her convent who was given permission by her confessor to receive daily. Before the Reformation it was not unusual for a gap of several months to elapse between a priest's ordination and his first Mass, When some of early followers of Ignatius of the Loyola introduced the novelty in Rome of daily reception St Philip Neri introduced the (novelty) of daily Confession.

The Venetian Ambassador to Henry VIII's court remarked on the piety of the English, their attendance daily at Mass and Vespers but even so they seemed to receive Holy Communion only once a year. The Lateran Council of course had introduced the Paschal Precept of annual reception of Confession and Holy Communion but the emphasis was the reception of Holy Communion, Confession was always the preparation for Holy Communion.

I don't know how common Martin Luther's practise in his early days was (if it is correctly reported) that he would interrupt his Mass when he celebrated and go to Confession immediately before the Consecration, even if this a myth, the story illustrates that the expectation was that priest should be in a perfect state of Grace, with no attachment to sin, in order to celebrate, similarly there was the expectation that those who communicated were in a similar state.

Though the Lateran talks about an annual reception of Holy Communion: the ancient Tradition of the Church was that a once in a lifetime reception of Holy Communion was all that was necessary for salvation. In Spain until almost modern times and in the Orthodox world still, even in the Romanised Rites, Holy Communion is always giving as part of the Baptism, after Confirmation, in the case of infants. The pastoral presumption in many places is that although the child may attend the Liturgy all their life they will rarely, if ever Communicate.

Holy Communion does not "indelibly" mark the soul but initiation does, as does a single encounter with Christ in the scriptures, it is life changing.

As good and pious the practise of daily Communion is, it tends to set up a tendency where it almost becomes a necessity to have a daily "fix" to maintain a spiritual life, rather than understanding a single Communion is a life changing event. Pius X would have understood Holy Communion as signifying a state that already existed, of perfect Communion with Christ, we seem to have moved quite some distance from that and seem to be moving further away from it.

Expecting people to receive or to be able to receive daily and at every Mass has made the Church either a place for Saints - and consequently not for sinners or a place were Holy Communion is about ordinariness, and reception without thought or understanding, preparation or thanksgiving, and where attendance at Mass is meaningless without Holy Communion.