We go now to Rosie in El Paso, Texas listening on EWTN--oh, listening to EWTN
on Roku. And I didn't even know you could do that. Rosie, you are on with Jim
Blackburn. Hi, how are you? Hi Rosie. I have a question: I teach RCIA, and it
wasn't a question before that when I had a catechumen and they didn't
convalidate their marriage--they were married civilly--they had to take care of that
first or they would get their sacraments on the day that they can validated their
marriage. So now my question is...the new priest--
I have a new priest at my parish, and he says "No," he says that you are not
supposed to turn away anybody from the Sacraments of Initiation--even if they
have not convalidated their marriage, as long as they're serious about convalidating
their marriage even afterwards. So they could go ahead and get all three
sacraments at this time. And I keep hearing around here from different
priests that the local priest--the priest from each parish can
decide for himself who can take communion and who cannot. And if this is true,
I'd like for you to tell me where I could find this; what document, what has
changed, am I wrong, is he wrong, what is going on?
Okay. Well Rosie, you mentioned quite a bit of information there. I have a question
for you, though: are we talking about-- you mentioned you are an RCIA teacher--
are we talking about catechumens? Are you sure we're talking about catechumens
here? Yes, a catechumen. He needs to be baptized; he has never been baptized in any Church.
Okay. Well then, there's been, I think, at least some sort of a misunderstanding
or miscommunication; because, as I'm sure you know, baptism is oftentimes called
"the gateway to the sacraments." It is the sacrament that must be received before
any of the other sacraments can be received. So until someone in your RCIA,
until a catechumen--and that's what a catechumen is, someone
who has not been baptized that is coming into the Church--until a catechumen has been
baptized, he cannot validly or licitly receive the other sacraments. So that's--I
mean, that's fundamental Catholic doctrine right there.
So I would approach--who was it that told you this? Was at your pastor that mentioned
this? Yes. Okay. Then I would take-- this is serious enough of a concern that
I would take this up the ladder. You know, call the bishop, call the bishop's
office, or call the vicar for priests, someone at the diocesan level to see
if you can explain this to them, see if they can explain to you what's going on.
And I suspect what has happened is that your pastor has misunderstood
some sort of directive from the bishop that might say something to the
effect of "If you have someone who's approaching you for the sacraments, it's
at your discretion whether you can administer the sacraments or not,
presuming--" just presuming-- "that this is a baptized Catholic that we're
talking about." Because certainly I can't believe a bishop would...in fact, I'm
certain that a bishop has not done what you've said, and allowed priests to
administer sacraments to the unbaptized. Because it's just--it's not possible to
administer the sacraments to be unbaptized. So I would take this up, I
think there's been some miscommunication, probably, from between your pastor and
wherever he received the instruction; and it's something that is serious enough
of a concern, I think the Church would call this a grave issue, serious enough of a
concern that it should be addressed. All right? Thank you. Thank you very much, Rosie.