I can remember when we were asked to eat nothing after midnight before receiving Communion on the day. Previous to this in the Middle Ages, people went to Communion only once a year at Easter. These restrictions served to underline our unworthiness.
In my humble opinion the laws of the church which decide who can and cannot participate at the table have engendered a divisiveness between the "worthy" and the "unworthy" which has no gospel basis.
We are all equally unworthy, yet the gospel repeatedly shows Jesus ignoring cultural and religious norms in favour of responding to people's needs. That's his priority which is sadly buried in this discussion.
Fr Arthur's mother shouldn't have had to rely on a lucky encounter with a compassionate priest.
Neither should many among the people of God have to deny themselves the food of life whilst they wait in hope to encounter the compassionate face of Christ.
Thank you, Fr Art. I could tell a similar story about my mother except that without the Eucharist she drifted away from attendance and never came back while always assuring that my sister and I experienced the Faith regularly. It is a sad story and one I hope not many more will tell. Prayers and more prayers. Blessings.
Your father was right- it is a rule without reason. Jacques Maritain argued with pope Paul VI against issuing Humanae Vitae. It is has made unnecessarily difficult life of many good Catholics
I am moved by the personal nature of your essay, and am so thankful that you are walking with so many of us who are searching to discern how our Lord is calling us to live our our faith, and not merely to be assured that we are doing what is right.
This is so beautiful and brought tears to my eyes. A different issue perhaps, but I know Catholics who have given up on getting an annulment due to the delays and now in our own Diocese, the process being even more difficult (4 testimonies rather than 2 as was the case under our prior bishop), invasive inquires about being in any relationship that "might lead to marriage" and if so, they want names of those people. Forget asking for absolution for an "irregular marriage", and don't receive communion either is the official stance. Your mother was a Saint, and she gave us a wonderful gift in her son Arthur.
Your comment about invasive inquiries, reminds me of the Justice Department now cancelled request of the phone records of NY Times reporters' spouses. Invasive? yes... but more than invasive... outrageous.
And I too had tears in my eyes, when I read this piece by Msgr. Holquin. How many left the Church over Humane Vitae? "Mommy, why are you not going to Communion?"
not only wanting names of "friends" but details on their marriages,whether widowed, divorced, annuled. yes Pamela, outrageous. People seeking annulments are seeking reconciliation, the sacraments, and healing, not more roadblocks.
Mary, I am stunned. I'm in the diocese of Phoenix.... nothing like that here. I agree with your point about those seeking annulments. Where is mercy? Your diocese sounds like the Inquisition!
if your friend decides to move here, I can connect him/her with a person who knows the ropes here in this diocese. I'm still stunned by such invasive procedures. May I ask what diocese you are referring to?
was being facetious, he filed 2 years ago, just waiting, and waiting. If I could send a private message to you I'd tell you. Not all who follow Msgr Art are friendly.
In annulment advocacy ministry, I have journeyed with people at all stages of personal experience, understanding of the Real Presence of the Eucharist, the "rules" of the Church. Pastoral listening and teaching is so important. The Law is necessary, but most people do not understand "the rules" and that the Church offers guidance with room for a person's moral and spiritual development. It is purposely gray, not black and white, for pastoral needs. Allowing time for a person's understanding and discernment is necessary... this is the person's journey, and this time is theirs. Amoris is the correct interpretation.
Thank you msgr. For this thoughtful and compassionate article....it comes deep from the heart of the catholic desire for healing and wholeness.....I have some questions but feel I can struggle through them myself so as to not detract from your message.....it sounds to me your mother is a Saint and bless her heart for her faith, I wish she had come across a good confessor long before she did.....
Louis Janssens, of the "why you can't even eat a banana without cooperation with ontic evil." Our morals prof's (and my good friend's) disseration advisor.
I love Cardinal Burke. I met him at a Catholic conference held annually in Louisville, KY. But I need to go back to 1966 when Confessions were filled during Holy Week. My husband and I were married about a year and he attended college while I worked full time. We used contraception for we could not afford children.
I believe it was the morning of Good Friday that I confessed my sin with great shame. The priest refused to give me absolution. I left the confessional in sobs and all eyes of the packed church on me.
I confessed to another priest not long after. He absolved me, saying the Pope said some people are weaker than others and if I was a weak person it wasn’t a sin. Yet, I continued to feel guilty and ashamed.
Twelve years of Catholic education made me a strong and devout person of faith, except for that one big sin.
My husband and I have been married for 61 years and I’m still haunted by my experience.
Priests have raped children, every confrere who knew of it kept silent and the hierarchy used the alms of the faithful to obstruct rightful justice to victims and society, and they did all of this whilst celebrating the Mass.
Imagine if so much time was spent on protecting children as these theologians spend on debating what is none of their business nor authority.
The hypocrisy and idiocy of this largely man-made religious institution is why I left decades ago.
It is the eighth wonder of the world to see Catholics submit (and fund) such insults to the risen Lord and their intelligence!
No offense to all the good and compassionate priests, many of whom I count as friends, and who post herein, but if Women had an equal say in our church, IMHO much of this wouldn't even be an issue.
Monsignor Holquin tells his mother’s story to move us, and it does. But read closely, his essay does not resolve her thirty years in the pew — it explains them, elaborately, and asks us to admire the explanation.
He wants it both ways. The Eucharist, he says, quoting Francis quoting Ambrose, is “not the prize of the perfect but medicine for the imperfect.” Good. Say that plainly and the fence comes down. Instead, the sentence arrives wrapped in qualification: this case does not qualify, that case requires discernment, an accompanying priest, a rescript from a cardinal. That is not medicine dispensed to the sick. That is a clinic with an intake form, and the form is the point. An unconditional gift administered through a conditional gate is not unconditional.
Holquin insists his mother’s case and the divorced-and-remarried case must not be confused. Canonically, he’s right. But his insistence reveals what he misses: two different doctrinal problems, yet the same structure of adjudicated mercy, dispensed by the same class of men who built the fence. The distinction he wants to preserve is not between mercy and no mercy. It is between two waiting rooms.
Then there is spiritual communion, which the essay never mentions but on which its argument depends. The Church teaches that desire and disposition can accomplish spiritually what physical reception accomplishes sacramentally. If that’s true, physical exclusion delivers nothing but exclusion. The sacrament’s exclusivity was never doctrinal necessity — it was discipline, a mechanism of visible belonging and visible banishment.
This is also a distinction built for people with room to think it. Parsing “sacramental grace” against “the grace of desire” takes an untroubled afternoon. Holquin’s mother did not have a seminar; she had thirty years of Sundays, in front of neighbors who could count who went forward. That image, offered with real tenderness, indicts the very apparatus the essay defends.
Ten years of dubia, correctio, rescripts, and synods have produced, by his own accounting, not a settled practice but “a mosaic of contradictory pastoral customs varying from diocese to diocese.” A woman may be welcomed at one altar and turned away at the next, and this is presented as maturation rather than a doctrine still deciding, region by region, who eats.
Francis’s insight was correct: we do not serve moral categories, we serve persons. But an institution that requires a rescript to say so is not living the insight — it is managing it. The gospel image is not a fence with a discerning gatekeeper. It is a table, and everyone comes to it hungry.
Holquin’s mother deserved the meal the day she first stood in that pew, not thirty years and a compassionate confessor later. So does everyone still waiting on the mosaic to resolve in their diocese. The measure of whether the Church believes its own words about mercy will not be another synod’s language. It will be whether the fence comes down.
I recall a friend‘s mother, Sunday after Sunday, walking her own elderly mother up to the communion rail only to be denied communion herself since she married a divorced man. I was always deeply saddened witnessing that.
Isn't it ironic? Absolution is granted for the most heinous sins: gossip, adultery, even murder. Oh but marry "outside the church" or marry a divorced person: forget absolution until (if and when) you get through all the hoops.
Thank you so much, Mnsgr Holquin. You give me some peace over my own situation. I have a genetic connective tissue disorder, with a mutation in a gene that has the potential to cause severe birth defects. I am also bipolar, and I take multiple medications—last time I went off my meds I ended up in the hospital for 2.5 weeks. For these reasons, my husband and I made the decision not to have children. I still believe this was the correct decision. I am now in my 50’s and I do not regret it. Our life together has been happy and full. However, the toll it took on our sex life was very real.
I was told in no uncertain terms at least three times during Confessions that I was expected to let the decision to have a child or not in God’s hands. That contraception was a sin because I was denying God the chance to gift us with a baby, and it would all work out. Essentially, I was expected to risk knowingly having a baby with severe birth defects, while stopping my psychiatric meds for a year, while being at increased risk of postpartum depression *with psychosis* because of my untreated bipolar disorder.
That risk was simply untenable for me. I have been considered totally and permanently disabled legally since my 30’s. Parenthood was not my calling in life. However, I am a deeply religious person, and I try every day to make a positive difference in the world, as does my husband. We should not have been told we were sinners for decades simply because we believed in our hearts that our life was following a different path. In my heart, I know God understands the position we were in, and he gave us the intelligence and selflessness to make an informed decision. Instead my husband and I struggled with what should have been one of the most treasured part of marriage. I’ve never had any priest recognize that maybe not *every* married couple is supposed to have children.
I think you have absolutely done the right thing and am sorry for the toll it has taken on you. There's a lot of malpractice going on in the confessional apparently.
I can remember when we were asked to eat nothing after midnight before receiving Communion on the day. Previous to this in the Middle Ages, people went to Communion only once a year at Easter. These restrictions served to underline our unworthiness.
In my humble opinion the laws of the church which decide who can and cannot participate at the table have engendered a divisiveness between the "worthy" and the "unworthy" which has no gospel basis.
We are all equally unworthy, yet the gospel repeatedly shows Jesus ignoring cultural and religious norms in favour of responding to people's needs. That's his priority which is sadly buried in this discussion.
Fr Arthur's mother shouldn't have had to rely on a lucky encounter with a compassionate priest.
Neither should many among the people of God have to deny themselves the food of life whilst they wait in hope to encounter the compassionate face of Christ.
Thank you, Fr Art. I could tell a similar story about my mother except that without the Eucharist she drifted away from attendance and never came back while always assuring that my sister and I experienced the Faith regularly. It is a sad story and one I hope not many more will tell. Prayers and more prayers. Blessings.
Your father was right- it is a rule without reason. Jacques Maritain argued with pope Paul VI against issuing Humanae Vitae. It is has made unnecessarily difficult life of many good Catholics
Pastoral sensitivity to a moral principle is most important. Not a courthouse but a church, not a judge but a Loving God
I am moved by the personal nature of your essay, and am so thankful that you are walking with so many of us who are searching to discern how our Lord is calling us to live our our faith, and not merely to be assured that we are doing what is right.
This is so beautiful and brought tears to my eyes. A different issue perhaps, but I know Catholics who have given up on getting an annulment due to the delays and now in our own Diocese, the process being even more difficult (4 testimonies rather than 2 as was the case under our prior bishop), invasive inquires about being in any relationship that "might lead to marriage" and if so, they want names of those people. Forget asking for absolution for an "irregular marriage", and don't receive communion either is the official stance. Your mother was a Saint, and she gave us a wonderful gift in her son Arthur.
Your comment about invasive inquiries, reminds me of the Justice Department now cancelled request of the phone records of NY Times reporters' spouses. Invasive? yes... but more than invasive... outrageous.
And I too had tears in my eyes, when I read this piece by Msgr. Holquin. How many left the Church over Humane Vitae? "Mommy, why are you not going to Communion?"
not only wanting names of "friends" but details on their marriages,whether widowed, divorced, annuled. yes Pamela, outrageous. People seeking annulments are seeking reconciliation, the sacraments, and healing, not more roadblocks.
Mary, I am stunned. I'm in the diocese of Phoenix.... nothing like that here. I agree with your point about those seeking annulments. Where is mercy? Your diocese sounds like the Inquisition!
I will tell my friend to move to Phoenix. Indeed, where is mercy?
if your friend decides to move here, I can connect him/her with a person who knows the ropes here in this diocese. I'm still stunned by such invasive procedures. May I ask what diocese you are referring to?
was being facetious, he filed 2 years ago, just waiting, and waiting. If I could send a private message to you I'd tell you. Not all who follow Msgr Art are friendly.
Amen, Monsignor. This is where we need to be guided by the Holy Spirit to employ the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law.
In annulment advocacy ministry, I have journeyed with people at all stages of personal experience, understanding of the Real Presence of the Eucharist, the "rules" of the Church. Pastoral listening and teaching is so important. The Law is necessary, but most people do not understand "the rules" and that the Church offers guidance with room for a person's moral and spiritual development. It is purposely gray, not black and white, for pastoral needs. Allowing time for a person's understanding and discernment is necessary... this is the person's journey, and this time is theirs. Amoris is the correct interpretation.
wish you were on our Tribunal in my county
Thank you msgr. For this thoughtful and compassionate article....it comes deep from the heart of the catholic desire for healing and wholeness.....I have some questions but feel I can struggle through them myself so as to not detract from your message.....it sounds to me your mother is a Saint and bless her heart for her faith, I wish she had come across a good confessor long before she did.....
Louis Janssens, of the "why you can't even eat a banana without cooperation with ontic evil." Our morals prof's (and my good friend's) disseration advisor.
I love Cardinal Burke. I met him at a Catholic conference held annually in Louisville, KY. But I need to go back to 1966 when Confessions were filled during Holy Week. My husband and I were married about a year and he attended college while I worked full time. We used contraception for we could not afford children.
I believe it was the morning of Good Friday that I confessed my sin with great shame. The priest refused to give me absolution. I left the confessional in sobs and all eyes of the packed church on me.
I confessed to another priest not long after. He absolved me, saying the Pope said some people are weaker than others and if I was a weak person it wasn’t a sin. Yet, I continued to feel guilty and ashamed.
Twelve years of Catholic education made me a strong and devout person of faith, except for that one big sin.
My husband and I have been married for 61 years and I’m still haunted by my experience.
By
I’m so sorry that you had that experience. I understand your pain
Priests have raped children, every confrere who knew of it kept silent and the hierarchy used the alms of the faithful to obstruct rightful justice to victims and society, and they did all of this whilst celebrating the Mass.
Imagine if so much time was spent on protecting children as these theologians spend on debating what is none of their business nor authority.
The hypocrisy and idiocy of this largely man-made religious institution is why I left decades ago.
It is the eighth wonder of the world to see Catholics submit (and fund) such insults to the risen Lord and their intelligence!
No offense to all the good and compassionate priests, many of whom I count as friends, and who post herein, but if Women had an equal say in our church, IMHO much of this wouldn't even be an issue.
Monsignor Holquin tells his mother’s story to move us, and it does. But read closely, his essay does not resolve her thirty years in the pew — it explains them, elaborately, and asks us to admire the explanation.
He wants it both ways. The Eucharist, he says, quoting Francis quoting Ambrose, is “not the prize of the perfect but medicine for the imperfect.” Good. Say that plainly and the fence comes down. Instead, the sentence arrives wrapped in qualification: this case does not qualify, that case requires discernment, an accompanying priest, a rescript from a cardinal. That is not medicine dispensed to the sick. That is a clinic with an intake form, and the form is the point. An unconditional gift administered through a conditional gate is not unconditional.
Holquin insists his mother’s case and the divorced-and-remarried case must not be confused. Canonically, he’s right. But his insistence reveals what he misses: two different doctrinal problems, yet the same structure of adjudicated mercy, dispensed by the same class of men who built the fence. The distinction he wants to preserve is not between mercy and no mercy. It is between two waiting rooms.
Then there is spiritual communion, which the essay never mentions but on which its argument depends. The Church teaches that desire and disposition can accomplish spiritually what physical reception accomplishes sacramentally. If that’s true, physical exclusion delivers nothing but exclusion. The sacrament’s exclusivity was never doctrinal necessity — it was discipline, a mechanism of visible belonging and visible banishment.
This is also a distinction built for people with room to think it. Parsing “sacramental grace” against “the grace of desire” takes an untroubled afternoon. Holquin’s mother did not have a seminar; she had thirty years of Sundays, in front of neighbors who could count who went forward. That image, offered with real tenderness, indicts the very apparatus the essay defends.
Ten years of dubia, correctio, rescripts, and synods have produced, by his own accounting, not a settled practice but “a mosaic of contradictory pastoral customs varying from diocese to diocese.” A woman may be welcomed at one altar and turned away at the next, and this is presented as maturation rather than a doctrine still deciding, region by region, who eats.
Francis’s insight was correct: we do not serve moral categories, we serve persons. But an institution that requires a rescript to say so is not living the insight — it is managing it. The gospel image is not a fence with a discerning gatekeeper. It is a table, and everyone comes to it hungry.
Holquin’s mother deserved the meal the day she first stood in that pew, not thirty years and a compassionate confessor later. So does everyone still waiting on the mosaic to resolve in their diocese. The measure of whether the Church believes its own words about mercy will not be another synod’s language. It will be whether the fence comes down.
Your last paragraph says it so beautifully.
I recall a friend‘s mother, Sunday after Sunday, walking her own elderly mother up to the communion rail only to be denied communion herself since she married a divorced man. I was always deeply saddened witnessing that.
Isn't it ironic? Absolution is granted for the most heinous sins: gossip, adultery, even murder. Oh but marry "outside the church" or marry a divorced person: forget absolution until (if and when) you get through all the hoops.
If men got pregant, you'd see a different set of rules no doubt. Priests like you keep me in the ark of Rome when I so often despair of change.
Thank you so much, Mnsgr Holquin. You give me some peace over my own situation. I have a genetic connective tissue disorder, with a mutation in a gene that has the potential to cause severe birth defects. I am also bipolar, and I take multiple medications—last time I went off my meds I ended up in the hospital for 2.5 weeks. For these reasons, my husband and I made the decision not to have children. I still believe this was the correct decision. I am now in my 50’s and I do not regret it. Our life together has been happy and full. However, the toll it took on our sex life was very real.
I was told in no uncertain terms at least three times during Confessions that I was expected to let the decision to have a child or not in God’s hands. That contraception was a sin because I was denying God the chance to gift us with a baby, and it would all work out. Essentially, I was expected to risk knowingly having a baby with severe birth defects, while stopping my psychiatric meds for a year, while being at increased risk of postpartum depression *with psychosis* because of my untreated bipolar disorder.
That risk was simply untenable for me. I have been considered totally and permanently disabled legally since my 30’s. Parenthood was not my calling in life. However, I am a deeply religious person, and I try every day to make a positive difference in the world, as does my husband. We should not have been told we were sinners for decades simply because we believed in our hearts that our life was following a different path. In my heart, I know God understands the position we were in, and he gave us the intelligence and selflessness to make an informed decision. Instead my husband and I struggled with what should have been one of the most treasured part of marriage. I’ve never had any priest recognize that maybe not *every* married couple is supposed to have children.
I think you have absolutely done the right thing and am sorry for the toll it has taken on you. There's a lot of malpractice going on in the confessional apparently.