LACK OF REVERENCE FOR THE EUCHARIST PUTS PEOPLE OFF CATHOLICISM -Patrick Madrid

The 'lack of reverence' for the Holy Eucharist is not just happening in the US. I am afraid this wrong practice of abuse is also happening in the Philippines. I can enumerate them one by one but Brother Patrick Madrid's reflection below maybe an EYE-OPENER for every Catholic reading this article. During this year of Extraordinary Year of Mercy, please do one of the 7 Spiritual Works of Mercy by INSTRUCTING those Catholics and non-Catholics still are IGNORANT of our faith! -CD2000

By Francis Phillips for Catholic Herald
Posted Thursday, 16 Jun 2016

How lack of reverence for the Eucharist puts people off Catholicism

A woman receives Communion during a Mass for young adults at St Patrick's Cathedral in New York City (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz)

Patrick Madrid recalls the Mormon who told him: 'I've never seen Catholics show awe. So I guess they don't believe it'

Having referred to Patrick Madrid’s Life Lessons: Fifty Things I Learnt in My First Fifty Years (US, UK) in my last blog, I have found it both so readable and so full of wise reflections based on his own experiences (which could easily be the reader’s experiences too), that I will highlight another chapter here.

Madrid relates that, as a full-time Catholic apologist, he was once giving a lecture on the Catholic faith when a Mormon in the audience asked if he could speak to him later on. During their conversation, which happened to be on the Eucharist and the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, the Mormon remarked, “I really don’t get the impression that most Catholics believe what you have just said about ‘the Eucharist’.”

Madrid was taken aback, commenting: “As a Catholic I figured that I’d know a whole heck of a lot better than what he, a Mormon, could possibly know about what Catholics believe, especially on something as central … as the Eucharist.” Then the Mormon explained that he had been to several Catholic weddings and to other Catholic Masses “And the Catholics I’ve seen there sure didn’t seem as though they believed in what you just said about Jesus being in the Eucharist.”

AsiaNews: Amoris laetitia, not only feelings and morality, but also social engagement

By Bernardo Cervellera
For Asia News
Posted on April 8, 2016

Photo Source: Crisis Magazine

Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation on family love cannot be reduced to problem of communion for divorced and remarried people. The document suggests ways to remake societal life. As a Catholic vision, it links the actual to the infinite, and calls for public policies that protect the rights of families.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which was released today, is a vital contribution to the life of families and contemporary society.

Although it might take Catholics and non-Catholics some time to assimilate the long (265 pages) and demanding document, its emphases, passages, biblical references and look at human love are an objective and solid milestone in the quicksand of situations that are often treated only with fleeting feelings, love spells, fears and private frustrations, which hide an individualist notion of self, in which solitude marks not only the end of a relationship, but acts as it definition, origin and nature.

The document offers a sweet and powerful vision of Catholic humanity that makes its way, corrects, brightens and goes beyond a rationalist and trite conception of ego, love and society.

Some might have liked the exhortation to be only a "yes" or "no" to communion for divorced and remarried people. Instead, Francis gave us a sign and path of how, not only the family, but also the Church, and the whole of society can change. It is interesting to note for example that in the description of actual love between a husband and a wife, the document also speaks of the help that they can give to make more substantial the gifts brought by virgins, who are sometimes tempted to live a single lifestyle more than the consecrated who give their whole life (Amoris Laetitia, n.158, ff).

In the exhortation, the Catholic vision emerges in three main aspects:

1. The love between a man and a woman is continuously defined as the "image of God" and the return to what God and Christ do as a model for relationships (giving oneself, lack of anger, forgiveness, generation, raising children, etc.).