The main Vatican cardinal considers "communion to be taken away" "insane"

While Catholic bishops in Europe and the United States discuss the reopening of the Mass to the faithful and ponder what to do for the distribution of communion, considered a moment of "high risk of contagion", Cardinal Robert Sarah of Ghana, head of the Vatican liturgical office, warned that the answer cannot be the "profanation of the Eucharist".

The cardinal said that "no one can be denied by confession and communion", therefore even if the faithful cannot attend mass, if a priest is asked to give one or the other to obey.

Nowadays, the Italian Bishops' Conference and the government of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte have continued negotiations after the recently announced "phase 2" of the quarantine, which means a gradual relaxation of the quarantine restrictions, although a date has not yet been announced. for the recovery of Massa.

According to La Stampa, an Italian newspaper, one of the solutions taken into consideration is a "takeaway" communion, since the distribution of the Eucharist is considered "at high risk of contagion". This proposal requires that the hosts placed in plastic bags be consecrated by the priests and left on the shelves to be carried by the people.

"No, no, no," Sarah told Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, an Italian conservative site, in an interview published Saturday. “It is absolutely not possible, God deserves respect, you cannot put it in a bag. I do not know who thought of this absurdity, but if it is true that the deprivation of the Eucharist is certainly a suffering, one cannot negotiate how to receive communion. We receive communion in a dignified way, worthy of God who comes to us ".

"The Eucharist must be treated with faith, we cannot treat it as a trivial object, we are not in the supermarket," said Sarah. “It is totally insane. "

When the reporter asked the prelate, who was sometimes seen as out of sync with Pope Francis, that this method is already in use in some churches in Germany, the prelate said that "unfortunately, many things are being done in Germany. that I'm non-Catholic, but that doesn't mean we have to imitate them. "

Sarah then said that she had recently heard a bishop say that in the future there would be no more Eucharistic assemblies - the Mass with the Eucharist - but the Liturgy of the Word: "But this is Protestantism," he said, without appointing the prelate.

The Guinean cardinal, who was appointed by Pope Francis as prefect of the Congregation for divine worship and the discipline of the sacraments in 2014, also stated that the Eucharist is not a "right or duty" but a gift freely offered by God which must be received with "veneration and love".

Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist after armies have been consecrated by the priest. According to Sarah, in the Eucharistic form God is a person, and "nobody would welcome a person he loves in a bag or in an unworthy way".

"The response to the privation of the Eucharist cannot be desecration," he said. "This really is a matter of faith if we believe we cannot treat it unworthily."

As for the mass streaming or on TV during the pandemic, Sarah said that Catholics cannot "get used to this" because "God is incarnate, he is flesh and blood, he is not a virtual reality". Furthermore, he said, it is misleading for priests, who should look at God during Mass and not the camera, as if the liturgy were a "spectacle".