“Partakers of the Same Sacrifice”

Abstract

“Partakers of the Same Sacrifice” Neil Xavier O’Donoghue Most papal encyclicals address issues of the day and therefore tend to lose relevance as time passes. Certiores effecti, issued in 1742 by Pope Benedict XIV (reigned 1740-58), is not one of them, given that the liturgical abuse it censures remains (270 years later!) all too prevalent. In this short encyclical, Benedict XIV encourages priests to administer Holy Communion to the faithful from hosts consecrated at the same Mass rather than from hosts retrieved from the tabernacle. Because the encyclical is difficult to obtain in the original Latin, and as I am unaware of an extant English translation of it in full, I append the full text in Latin and English (my translation). I. Historical Background Liturgical historians generally agree that up to the fourth century the faithful communicated at every Mass, partaking of eucharistic elements solely consecrated at that celebration.1 Numerous sources attest, moreover, that it was customary for the faithful to take home from the Sunday Eucharist enough of the “eucharistized” bread for Holy Communion on weekdays, when there was normally no celebration of the Eucharist; they also brought the Sacrament to members of the local community who could not attend the liturgy because of illness, imprisonment, or the difficulties of travel.2 Decline in the frequency of Communion Following the adoption of Christianity as the state religion after the Peace of Constantine (312), the reception of Holy Communion be1 On the frequency of holy Communion, see: Joseph Nicholas Stadler, Frequent Holy Communion: A Historical Synopsis and a Commentary, Canon Law Studies 263 (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1947); Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (Missarum Sollemnia) [revised and abridged edition in one volume, ed. Charles K. Riepe], trans. Francis A. Brunner (London: Burns & Oates, 1959) 498-502; and, most recently, Joseph Dougherty, From AltarThrone to Table: The Campaign for Frequent Holy Communion in the Catholic Church (Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press, 2010). 2 See Robert F. Taft, “Home-Communion in the Late Antique East” in Ars Liturgiae: Worship, Aesthetics and Praxis. Essays in Honor of Nathan D. Mitchell , ed. Clare V . Johnson (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2003) 1-25. Antiphon 16.2 (2012): 130-143 131 “Partakers of the Same Sacrifice” came generally restricted to the celebration of Mass. Yet the frequency of reception sharply declined in some places. As the renowned Jesuit liturgist Joseph Jungmann reports in his classic study The Mass of the Roman Rite: Already Chrysostom, among the Greeks, complained: “In vain do we stand before the altar; there is no one to partake.” In Gaul, too, the Synod of Agde (506) found it necessary to insist on Communion three times a year, on Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, as a minimum. And this demand was repeated time and time again till the very height of the Middle Ages, sometimes with the addition of Maundy Thursday. In the Carolingian reform the attempt was made to re-introduce Communion every Sunday, especially on the Sundays of Lent, but the result was at best temporary. From the eighth century onward, the actuality seems generally not to have gone beyond what the Lateran Council of 1215 established as a new minimum: Communion at Easter.3 Explanations have been advanced for this unexpected development: the extended period of penitence (and thus exclusion from the Eucharist ) imposed on apostates who had returned to the Church once she had finally gained freedom; the common postponement of baptism until a later age; the development of a spirituality of reverential fear with regard to the Eucharist—the mysterium tremendum—and a corresponding sense of personal unworthiness;4 the multiplication of cases of exclusion from the Sacrament, especially for married 3 Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, 499. Fourth Lateran Council , chap. 21, in Henry Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 30th ed., trans. Roy J. Deferrari, The Sources of Catholic Dogma (St Louis: B. Herder, 1957; reprint, Powers Lake ND: Marian House, n.d.) §437, p. 173: “Let everyone of the faithful of both sexes, after he has arrived at the years of discretion, alone faithfully confess all his sins at least once a year to his...