These are my cups ... (you may be right).The question the September Glad You Asked article ("Why drink from the cup?" by Jim Dinn) does not address is: Why drink from one cup? I have heard liturgists speak about the powerful symbolism Symbolism In art, a loosely organized movement that flourished in the 1880s and '90s and was closely related to the Symbolist movement in literature. In reaction against both Realism and Impressionism, Symbolist painters stressed art's subjective, symbolic, and decorative of drinking from a single cup and its faithfulness to the way it was done at the Last Supper Last Supper, in the New Testament, meal taken by Jesus and his disciples on the eve of the passion. Jesus broke bread and passed a cup of wine among the disciples, identifying himself with the bread and the wine and linking the meal to his impending death on the , but so what? They also apparently ate from a single loaf of bread. But we don't bother with that symbolism at Communion time. The real issue becomes one of priorities: Is it more important to hold on to the one-cup rule in spite of all we learn and teach about hygiene, or is it more important to have people drink the Precious Blood? Does anyone really think that as we learn more about hygiene and germs and sanitation, people will be more likely to drink from that single cup? Why not learn from other Christian churches and use their idea of individual cups to foster greater participation? We are encouraged by documents from the Second Vatican Council Noun 1. Second Vatican Council - the Vatican Council in 1962-1965 that abandoned the universal Latin liturgy and acknowledged ecumenism and made other reforms Vatican II Vatican Council - each of two councils of the Roman Catholic Church to remember that "full participation" should be a very high priority and may need to take precedence The order in which an expression is processed. Mathematical precedence is normally: 1. unary + and - signs 2. exponentiation 3. multiplication and division 4. over history and symbolism. L.A. Reinhart Reno, Nev. Does Dinn's article provide an answer? I don't think so. In fact, it does a great disservice dis·ser·vice n. A harmful action; an injury. disservice Noun a harmful action Noun 1. to those faithful Catholics who have chosen, for whatever reason, not to drink from the cup. It makes them feel that their participation in the Eucharist is not as full as it could be, or should be. And the implied statement that they are receiving the legal minimum, rather than the fullness of Christ's Body and Blood, is blatantly false. This kind of sophism soph·ism n. 1. A plausible but fallacious argument. 2. Deceptive or fallacious argumentation. [Middle English sophime, sophisme, from Old French sophime can only lead to the creation of two classes of recipients. Will one receive more grace than the other? Charles N. Marrelli Irvine, Calif. |
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