As various parts of the world enter yet-another totalitarian lockdown, precipitating further social and spiritual malaise, if not outright despair – there will come a day of reckoning for the political and medical apparatchiks – I was very glad to receive a ray of hope when someone sent along Cardinal Sarah’s tweet – tweeting cardinals being a rather odd image, now that I write that – making clear the right of the faithful to receive regular Holy Communion and Confession. In his Eminences’ own words, in case the censorious homeless-looking Dude Dorsey decides to take down what he might deem offensive prose:
Nobody can prevent a priest from confessing and giving communion, nobody has the right to stop him. The sacrament must be respected. So even if it is not possible to attend Masses, the faithful can ask to be confessed and to receive Communion. +RS
We must keep our spirits and souls cleansed, nourished and fed, even more so than our bodies, and the right to do so is fundamental. I’m not sure what level of Magisterial authority a tweet from a Cardinal has, but these are the words of the Head of the Congregation of Divine Worship, so it seems priests are bound to fulfill this exhortation, regardless of political diktat.
Today, in the usus antiquior, is the feast of ‘All Irish Saints’, all those, we may presume, not otherwise honoured by the Church in her public liturgy. Sort of a mini-Saint Patrick’s Day, but with many more intercessors. The Emerald Isle – the whole British Isle, nay, the whole Island of the World – could should use the prayers.