"Is it worth Communion?"

When I had recently left the SSPX, my husband and I were attending the FSSP parish about 10 minutes away from where I grew up. I had always been dissuaded by the SSPX from attending the Fraternity, on account of the fact that “Rome was in error” and the priests who had formed the FSSP had left the SSPX to “compromise” with Rome, and in doing so had compromised the Catholic Faith. The unspoken conclusion was that in attending the FSSP your faith would be compromised and you would not be able to call yourself truly traditional or truly Catholic. I have heard people tell stories of friends and family leaving the SSPX to attend the FSSP and eventually they went to the NO, and some even stopped practicing. These very few people who ended up not practicing were held up as examples, a billboard advertising “this could be you.” One priest was heard to say, “The FSSP is the gateway to the Novus Ordo.” In the SSPX, the NO is the last place you ever want to find yourself. One is encouraged to stay home from church and pray your Rosary over attending the NO. Based on this reasoning, one can understand the concerns that people in the SSPX had for me when I decided to stop attending the SSPX and attend other Latin Masses. On one occasion I was speaking with a former classmate, and she mentioned I had changed so much. I informed her that part of it had to do with me now attending the FSSP, to which she posed the following question:

“Is it worth communion with Rome?”

At the time I didn’t know how to respond, I just knew that I needed to be in communion with Rome. In the years since then, I have matured in my understanding of communion, and can maybe make more of an appropriate response. 

Recently I was reading Joseph Ratzinger’s “The Theological Highlights of Vatican II,” and stumbled upon the following, which sums up my former understanding of communion, and my current understanding of communion.

“One of the arguments given in the Middle Ages for keeping these two areas [of sacrament and jurisdiction, of consecrating power and power of governance] separate was the argument that the Eucharist had to do with the actual body of the Lord-and that the other sacraments stood in correlation to the eucharist. The power to rule in the Church, however, had to do with the mystical body of Christ, and this ruling power was delegated and organized by the pope. Thus the legal sphere became completely independent in the Church alongside the sacramental sphere. There was no mutual interpenetration between the centralism of the law, shaped and administered by the pope, and the pluralism of the administration of the sacraments, dependent on sacramental consecration. Our century's liturgical and theological renewal has removed the basis for this division. We know again today that the sacramental and mystical body of Christ do not exist as parallel separate realities, but have their existence both from and with each other.” (pg 188) This false understanding of Communion, that is, keeping the sacramental and the juridical aspects separate, plays into the misunderstanding of collegiality in traditionalist circles (but that is a topic for another day).

At the time my sense of communion was very simple and I was not very knowledgeable on the topic. At the time, it was “worth communion” to leave the SSPX because I did not want to raise my kids in the town I grew up in, and I did not want to send them to the school where I had attended. I had a very simple and almost vague sense of what jurisdiction meant – I knew that it was something needed to be part of the church and it required being under the bishop, and I knew I had not been under the bishop until I stopped attending the SSPX. In fact, the SSPX teaches the opposite- “We do not need to be under the bishop.” (They even cite the “advantage” they have over other TLM groups because those groups “require the bishop’s permission to operate.”) Even though I never felt a sense of “home” about the FSSP, as it was essentially the same rules, liturgy, and spirituality that I had had my whole life, I still felt part of the actual Catholic church and had no desire to ever return to the SSPX. Attending the FSSP, I loved that the bishop was sometimes mentioned by the priests in a positive and good way; I don’t even think I knew who the bishop was growing up or that we had one. I loved that we celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday (even though it was more out of joy of celebrating a feast that “normal Catholics” [that is, not traditionalists] I followed on social media were also celebrating, and less of an understanding of the feast itself). I loved that we were encouraged to go to a diocesan parish close by for Adoration, as it made me feel part of something bigger. I loved that we could go anywhere for Mass (not that I was willing to go to the NO at the time, but the option was there), and I wasn’t relegated to only going to SSPX chapels. Overall, it can be summed up in that I felt part of the whole church where we talked about the Pope and bishops, and orders such as Franciscans and Carmelites still existed, and the weight of carrying on the Catholic Faith didn’t rest on our small group of a couple thousand people. But I still didn’t fully understand communion, and how important it is, and it would take another couple of years for me to grasp the concept. But once I understood Communion, the thought of stepping in an SSPX chapel made me sick to my stomach. 

If I could go back in time, I wish I could explain to my friend why it was worth Communion, on both a canonical level, and on the level of personal Faith. The entire point of the Catholic Church is communion. This communion is found in the Eucharist, in the visible Church Christ founded, and in the Communion of Saints. These 3 things are all interconnected and cannot lawfully be separated. 

Let us take a quick look at the Eucharist, and what it is. All other sacraments point to Christ, but the sacrament of the Eucharist is Christ Himself. Christ is united to the Church as her bridegroom, and there is a marriage between the two. When priests confect the Eucharist they profess this union of Christ to His bride. You may have heard it said before that the Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary is the consummation of His marriage to the Church. To confect the Eucharist illicitly, that is, without proper delegation from the Authority of the church to do so, is to lie; it is to “play the harlot” (see Ex 34:15, Dt 31:16, Jer 3:6, and many others),  and confect the Eucharist outside of the marriage of Christ and the Church; it is to profess a unity when there is no union. Likewise, when we receive the Eucharist, we receive with all members of the church, and we profess this union of the Body of Christ. I cannot claim access to the sacraments, or claim to be part of the Body of Christ, while I am attending a liturgy and receiving the Body of my God into my own self, outside of the Mystical Body of Christ. Do we not see the rupture here that is occurring? It is a mangling of the Body of Christ. As St John Chrysostom wrote, “Nothing so provokes God's anger as the division of the Church. Yea, though we have achieved ten thousand glorious acts, yet shall we, if we cut to pieces the fullness of the Church, suffer punishment no less sore than they who mangled His body.”

Christ founded a visible church with a visible head. “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” This is something we were taught for basic proof of the founding of the Church, so why do we ignore that that visible church exists and ignore that she is His bride? The Church is visible, with a visible head, the successor of Peter; she is visible so that we can see her and find her. The Church is not some small specific group we have to search out and find. (I know many Catholics who would not know that the SSPX and their beliefs about the church even exist.) To leave communion is to cut yourself off from the Authority of the Pope, the Vicar of Christ. You cannot claim to be part of the Universal Church when you refuse to commune, that is, receive the Eucharist, with the rest of the Mystical Body. In fact, to claim it is sinful and a compromise of Faith to commune with the Catholic church is to imply that there is a defect in the Church, the Church who Christ promised He would be with all days. Our Lord spoke the following words “Who accepts you, accepts me, and who rejects you, rejects me, and rejects Him who sent me.” (Luke 10:16) To reject lawful authority God has placed over us is to reject His authority. 

The Communion of Saints consists of three groups - the Church Triumphant, the Church Militant, and the Church Suffering. We are all one Mystical Body with Christ as the Head. So while reception of the Eucharist is personal in the aspect that we receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus into our very being, it is also communal, in that it affects the entire Communion of Saints.

I have heard people in schismatic sects say “But we have a great community” as a reason for attending their Mass center. I’m sure the Mormons, Protestants, and Orthodox also have great communities. Community is something people crave for, we are MADE for that type of living. “It is not good for man to be alone.” But I have seen what trying to create your own “Catholic” community apart from communion with Rome looks like. See, when Catholics attend Mass across the universal church, we worship as one Body. What one person does affects the rest of the Mystical Body. If you cut yourself off, you don’t belong to the Body anymore, and you no longer benefit from the church and her sacraments, for the sacraments must be legitimate as well as valid. The effects of cutting oneself off are ugly. Sure it might look like a great community - but ugly things fester because one cannot have charity apart from the Body.  You cannot cut yourself off from the lifesource of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and hope to retain any type of healthy flourishing community, as your soil will not be fertile or fruitful. Time and again we have seen schismatic attitudes in groups lead to cult-like behavior. That is not what the church is about at all. 

There are also personal reasons for me, that communion is “worth it”, which don’t have to do with legality, but that flow from it. The first and most important reason that I remain in arms of Mother Church, under the authority of the lawful bishop, is the peace of soul that I have found in just attending my local diocesan parish. It is a grace for sure, and I have spoken with others whose experiences echo mine. I would not trade this peace of soul for anything.

A second reason is that I have been more impacted by Vatican II and the Missal of Paul VI than by any Latin Mass I ever attended. There is something about worshiping in a language which we communicate in daily, for the words mean more to us when we understand them; it is effective on a psychological level. Yes, the church does desire us to use more Latin, and I believe in the next couple decades we will see the norm be to use both the vernacular and Latin in the Ordinary Form. But for now, as someone who spent almost three decades struggling through Latin Mass and trying to understand the Mass, hearing the daily readings, praying the Mass in English, even saying the responses aloud, have impacted me more than I can put into a few sentences here. Also being able to read about Vatican II and seeing how the church wishes us to read and implement it, I can see that the actuality of the Second Vatican Council is a far cry from the evil event it was displayed as during my time in traditionalist circles.

The third reason I would like to discuss ties with the first. It is mainly because I have learned to trust in God on a deeper level, to truly trust. I have peace beyond measure and I no longer have to worry about every little thing that the church does. My area of interest has shrunk to my circle of influence, namely my husband, my children, our parish/community. I no longer have to worry about everything that comes out of Rome because I have already learned to trust the church. I believe that this is a personal test that God asks every one of us. “Do you trust Me?” After all, isn’t our religion at the heart of it to do with relationship with Him? And is trust not something inherent to a good and lasting relationship?

The final point I wish to talk about, I want to touch on something I mentioned above: how passing on the faith didn’t rest on the shoulders of our small group. Growing up, the church felt like a solidified moment in time, something that had to be preserved and did not touch the world, and the world did not touch it. Since coming into communion, I have been able to see the church alive and flourishing. In the SSPX, our list of saints ended with the early 20th century; we discounted recent canonizations, and I was not even aware of most saints who had been canonized since VII. Today I am able to see that there are so many people IN the church alive today who are living saints, and I am able to follow the countless others who are on the path to sainthood. So many people in the Church are so in love with her and her Bridegroom, and it flows out from their souls in their words, actions, mannerisms, everything, and I did not encounter this until I was almost 27 years old.

A second way in which I am able to see the church as something alive, is in regards to studying and learning about the faith. The literature we had access to was limited to content produced before Vatican II, and anything produced by Angelus Press. Not to mention, spirituality which we did have access to revolved around writings of saints who deprecated themselves before God, almost as if God was disgusted by the sight of them, and there was no impression that any of these writers knew they were truly loved by God. I do believe we reach a place that, when we understand the wideness and grandeur of God, we see how small and insignificant we are, but for a child or teen reading this type of literature, it sends the message that they are not loved. Anything written after the 1960’s you had to be careful of, as it could contain errors. I was even warned to be careful with reading Archbishop Fulton Sheen, as he was “wrong on some things.” Today, in full Communion with Rome, I am able to trust her documents and promulgations. Resources from scholars such as Scott Hahn, Brant Pitre, Bishop Barron and others, writings from those such as Ratzinger and John Paul II, material produced by faithful Catholic companies like Ascension, have been so pivotal in my growth in faith and understanding of the Church, her sacraments, the liturgy, the Bible and so much more. I can trust that there is no error contained in the Catechism, and am able to see how truly beautiful it is. I have grown in my faith, and my understanding of it so much since coming into Communion.