How much respect is right?

The first priest to make a lasting impression on my life was Fr Bonner of the Monastery parish in Pretoria. This was during my formative years in the late 1940s and, to be entirely honest, the reason for my hanging on to his every word probably had less to do with the fact that he was a devout, humble and wise man of God, and far more to do with the fact that he owned a motorbike.

If my memory serves me correctly, it was he who told our catechism class at nearby CBC that in an emergency anyone, including a Standard 2 schoolboy, could baptise a baby.

We were in awe, and for days after, at home time, gangs of 8-year-old CBC boys could be seen hijacking mothers in the school parking lot and baptising their babies. Ever since then I have wasted no time in baptising newborns when my children, nephews and nieces appear to be in no hurry to arrange a christening.

But I heard of something that took place in a Johannesburg parish a while back that made me wonder whether this empowerment of lay people with regard to emergency baptisms might actually be extended beyond that.

What happened was that at Mass one day a lot of young children came up with their mothers at Communion time, and the priest would lay his hands on their heads. Nothing unusual about that; I have always thought it to be a wonderful gesture. But on this occasion, a strand of hair got on to the priest’s fingers and, unbeknown to him, it transferred on to the host which was then placed on the tongue of the next adult in line. She reacted without thinking and before she could stop herself, she gagged and spat out the host.

Was she to blame? Was the priest to blame? Was anyone to blame? Was she actually spitting out the body of Christ? Or, in a split second, was she empowered enough to immediately convert the Sacred Host back into a simple piece of unleavened bread?

There was another story I heard from a parish in KwaZulu-Natal where a lay usher noticed an elderly man receiving Communion in his hands but not putting it in his mouth and then leaving church right away. The usher took the decision that the elderly gent was committing some sort of sin and accosted him outside the church, forcing him to either put the Host in his mouth or hand it over.  Apparently the usher was fairly aggressive about it all, and the old man got such a fright he quickly ate the Host and scampered away.

The usher apparently didn’t bother to ask why the old man was hurrying away clutching the host. He was not a regular parishioner and no-one ever saw him again. But let’s give him the benefit of doubt and assume that he had an extremely sick wife and no access to a priest or Eucharistic minister to give his wife Communion. If so, was he sinning in his action?

On the other hand, if he was up to no good, was that usher not empowered to simply offer up a prayer and request that the Host simply be turned back into a piece of unleavened bread? There must have been a better way of handling things than getting into a barney on the church steps and a tug-of-war over a Host.

Then there was the incident a while back of someone who went into a Catholic Church overseas somewhere, received Communion, and then later offered the Host for public auction on eBay. I remember quite well that there was an awful to-do about that incident, with Catholic sensitivities being more than just a little ruffled all the way from the Vatican to the most remote parish in Tierra del Fuego.

Is there some complicated procedure within Canon Law that is required to reverse the process of turning bread into the Body of Christ? Or was that Host transformed back into bread before that opportunist had left the church?

Just how empowered is the laity these days when it comes to emergencies? I suppose I could have done some research before writing his column and given the answers. But I thought it far better to create some lively debate for you to enjoy over Sunday lunch.