This is a good example of what happens when there are abuses piled on top of
abuses, and the local bishops let it go or worse, even support the abuses.
In this "service" the consecrated hosts and "cup" of wine were "passed around" to
the people in attendance, and this one guy with a "well-trained German Shepherd"
who had come in late to the "service" took one of the hosts from the bowl he was
handed and gave the host to his dog.
~ The guy with the dog showed up "late" to the "service." How late? Was it a
Sunday Mass? If he arrived during the consecration, for example, and was
late for no good reason, he had already missed Mass on Sunday and shouldn't be
receiving communion anyway, so why was he given the container of hosts? Was
the man even Catholic? What was his dog doing there? "Well trained" is probably
not a seeing-eye dog. No mention of the man being blind, either, so he probably
wasn't.
So what does the local bishop have to say about the whole affair?
He only criticized the news, accusing the journalist of using the wrong words to
describe the Blessed Sacrament, that instead of "consecrated bread and wine,"
he should have said "body and blood of Jesus Christ."
***Update:Archbishop Hart responds
Archbishop Hart has written a [letter] to the editor and put out a press release complaining about the way this story was reported in The Age:
"Archbishop Denis Hart of the Archdiocese of Melbourne said today that Melbourne’s The Age newspaper was holding Catholicism up for ridicule in an article published in The Age this morning.
The article ‘Every flock needs a shepherd’ (The Age, 6/8), reports that at a Mass conducted by a group called Inclusive Catholics, the Blessed Sacrament was given to a dog.
The Archbishop said “that anyone would feed the Eucharist to a dog is an abomination.”
Writing to the Editor of The Age today, the Archbishop said “Your article ‘Every flock needs a shepherd’ is in bad faith. It is the most fundamental and defining belief of Catholics that what you call ‘the consecrated bread and wine’ is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.”
“That you should choose to report the matter in the way that you did can only be understood as an attempt to hold Catholicism up to ridicule.
“Your integrity in this matter can be judged by asking whether, if something sacred to Judaism or Islam had similarly been desecrated, you would have treated the matter with such flippancy.”
No word however on what action is being taken against priest and congregation...
Has Archbishop Hart considered that
~ It's an abomination that anyone would bring a dog into Mass in the first place?
~ It's an abomination that they pass around a bowl with consecrated hosts?
~ It's an abomination that someone arriving "late" to the "service" is handed the bowl?
~ It's an abomination that they are desecrating the Mass with the abominable
Novus Ordo liturgy in the first place?
~ It's an abomination to pass around the Chalice too?
~ It's an abomination that the Archbishop continues to support innovations and novelty of all kinds?
~ It's an abomination that their "service" is in the vernacular language and not Latin?
~ It's an abomination that this Archbishop encourages "inclusiveness" and "ecuмenism" and "religious liberty" against all Sacred Tradition?
~ It's an abomination that with all these abuses, the Archbishop has the temerity to complain about how The Age reported the story????