The Newsday reporter who attended Mas Camp's Randal "Randy" Burkett's funeral last week, wrote on Tuesday October 15 that family, friends and well wishers who attended the funeral "couldn't stop talking about a statement made by the officiating priest Father Murray."
Seems the astonishment was caused when the padre asked "that all non-Catholics and others who were not in a state of grace to receive communion, not receive the sacrament."
If the reporter and other mourners attended as many funerals as I do, they would have been quite familiar with this oft repeated statement which never ceases to amaze and irritate lots of people, including myself.
I once discussed this matter with the late Archbishop Pantin. In his usual gentle manner, he disagreed with my likening this act to someone inviting me into their home and then telling me that I could not share in the meal. It was the church's rule, was his firm reply. "But is it really necessary for the priest to make this statement" I asked. Again he assured me that there was nothing to prevent a priest from so doing.
I have asked another Roman Catholic priest: "How do your priests know who is Roman and who is protestant. There are no tags on anybody's chest defining the religion to which they belong." What really has prompted this article is that last Saturday, following the Newsday report, I attended a funeral at All Saints Anglican Church and there was Canon Claude Berkley graciously inviting all and sundry to come to the altar and receive communion, no matter their religious persuasion. An invitation that was always issued by the former rector of All Saints - Canon Winston Joseph - and by many other Anglican priests.
This is the era of ecumenism which means "the promotion or tending toward worldwide Christian unity." Is this the Roman Catholic contribution to uniting all faiths.
The Bible is filled with stories which show that Jesus was more concerned about the sinners that the saints. Why therefore this differentiating between those who are in a "state of grace" which would be the saints and those who are not in that state which would be the supposed "sinners."
Take the woman of Samaria whom Jesus asked for a drink at the well. The woman had had five husbands and was in a common-law relationship. When the disciples found Jesus chatting with the woman, they knew better than to question why he was talking with her. And there is the woman who was a sinner, she brought an albaster box of ointment, washed Jesus' feet with tears, wiped them with the hairs of her head, kissed his feet and annointed them with the ointment. The Pharisee questioned Jesus for letting the sinner touch him. Jesus compared all her kind acts to him with the fact that Simon had done none of them for him, and forgave her sins.
On Judgement Day, we will personally be accountable to the Lord if we were not in a state of grace when we accepted the sacrament. The responsibility for being in a state of grace rests with each individual, and no one should even attempt such a judgement call as to who is, and who is not, in a state of grace.