According to tradition, World Youth Day is being largely ignored by the secular press and is being marked with nonstop complaining by Catholic social media.
My own view of World Youth Day is more or less like what I said about the Steubenville Conferences: It’s not my cup of tea, but I’m definitely not prepared to say that that means it’s no good. The spirit blows where it will, and I am trying not to get in its way.
The main thing that people are complaining about, this time around, is the distribution of the Eucharist, and the way the sacrament was reserved and displayed.
There were an estimated 1.5 million people at Mass, and so there were thousands of Eucharistic ministers, and people on social media shared photos of the hosts being distributed in plastic or ceramic bowls with the retail bar code sticker still stuck to the bottom, and covered with plastic wrap to keep them from spilling.
There were also photos of the reserved hosts being stored in some kind of heavy-duty plastic tubs stacked up on a table in a tent, either with a potted plant perched on top, or possibly with a monstrance on top; it was hard to tell from the photo. Young people were kneeling in the grass before the Lord, who had been placed in this arrangement.
I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. It’s hard to say how this arrangement is reverent in any meaningful way. I tend to side with the argument that, if the logistics of such an enormous operation made it necessary to put the Body of Christ into plastic tubs and plastic bowls with plastic wrap on top, then they just . . . shouldn’t have done it.
They should have had Mass without distributing Communion to thousands of people, which is totally a thing (we did that all through the pandemic, and got very good at reciting the prayer for spiritual communion together); or they could have just had adoration, with Jesus displayed in a more fitting receptacle. This wasn’t a war or an emergency or an unpredictable event. It wasn’t truly necessary to store consecrated hosts in plastic tubs. It didn’t have to happen.
I said that I sided with this argument, but I did not side with the way many people were making it. I will not link to any of it, but my feeds on several accounts were inundated with the most sneering, jeering, rage-filled invectives against everyone involved in World Youth Day.
Let me tell you something….Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
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Related reading: He is not safe with me
I’m thankful for this article Simcha, because you make an excellent point. When this issue was first brought up I kind of shrugged it off as “meh, it’s the most convenient way to get the host to all these faithful youths.”
But this article reminded me of this crucial fact: if Catholics don’t treat the Eucharist with the utmost respect, then literally no one else will.
I already see so many posts and comments from non-Catholic Christians about how sillly the idea of the Host at mass becoming the actual body and blood of Christ is, and how Catholics are weird heathens who have strayed from actual Biblical teachings.
What will people think when they see this supposed precious body and blood thrown into plastic containers out of convenience? It encourages an attitude of flippancy when it’s supposed to be the very heart of the Church.
Thanks as always for your view on these matters!
I don’t love the plastic containers but I think they’re preferable to not distributing the Eucharist. I remember our long time babysitter attended two WYDs. She loved them but she was counting every penny. It’s clear to me that the organizers needed a cost effective vessel to transport the Eucharist and they decided plastic would do. I wasn’t in on the planning meetings. I am glad so many young people were able to partake.
The plastic bins are disturbing and upsetting, but look…
There were young people there adoring Him. They knew He was there, and we’re acting like it. So those pictures have a great deal of hope in them too.
I admit feeling a little like I wish they didn’t use plastic tubs and bowls with plastic wrap for the consecrated Hosts, but I also wonder if what seems like an abomination to many Americans might seem acceptably reverent to someone from another culture. It seems like most of the complaints I’ve seen come from Americans. I guess what is important is what the Church says should be done with the Body and whether there are allowable contingencies when there are 1+ million people there. If no rules were broken, and the Body was revered (which seems to be the case from the photo of people kneeling in His presence) maybe I just need to be thankful they needed many tubs full of Hosts to share with God’s people.
Well, I wish my kids had gone. #6 dearly wanted to, but we didn’t have the $ due to my hours being unceremoniously cut in half where I work. They fired me from teaching religion because it was too Catholic.
Sometimes when I’m feeling upset about how I’m being treated, I realize that nothing I’ve suffered comes close to how Jesus was treated. A good confessor semi-fixed my guilt about this (or any comparison that makes my sufferings/setbacks seem silly.) So I guess that I agree that the plastic tubs are gross, but I don’t know, it made me think about the time that Jesus spent shut up in that awful cell after his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemani. It must have been horrific. We kind of skip over that when we pray the Sorrowful Mysteries. People who hated him put him there, and his God-understanding was all poured out, so there was zero consolation, right? Jesus in the Eucharist is different. He waits for us, and longs for us, but he is not in a state of suffering/agony when he is present in the Eucharist. I don’t think the plastic bins are actually the problem. Indifferent hearts are. Maybe the poor person who resorted to them was apologizing right and left.
My hunch is that Jesus was not only not upset, but delighted about all the souls who desired to receive him.
On a different note, my oldest son loved going to WYD in Germany, but he talked #6 out of spending the money. He has become so practical with age. Bills and a mortgage will do that to you. When we asked our pastor about any group going he seemed surprised like he had forgotten about it 🙁 :(. He’s not into mentoring the young adults in the least.
To me the most important part of this story is that 1.5 million youth participated in the Mass. That gives me hope for our church. The nitpicking you describe only drives people away. Let us focus on the strengths of our Church, including the youth.