The Eucharist is a gift, not a right! Bishop Athanasius Schneider, in a statement about the Pan Amazon Synod, tells us what the approach to the Amazon should be, and it isn’t the plan of the liberal dissenters in the German Church.
Responding to Bishop Erwin Kräutler who said lack of Masses in the Amazon is a “scandal,” Bishop Schneider says, “One should rather speak of a scandal when one considers the fact that, during the last decades in the Amazon, intensive pastoral initiatives to foster vocations were not launched....One of the most effective means in order to foster solid priestly vocations, also in the Amazon, are missionaries who lead a life as true men of prayer, as true apostles....Those that Bishop Kräutler and many of his clerical fellow travelers now demand are, rather, caricature-priests in the form of aid workers, NGO employees, socialist syndicalists, and eco-specialists.... If, over a long period of time and due to the lack of priests, Catholics cannot receive Holy Communion, then one should instruct them to practice spiritual Communion which has a great spiritual strength and effect. The Desert Fathers, for example, have lived for years without the Eucharist and have reached a great union with Christ. My parents and I myself for years were unable to receive Holy Communion in the Soviet Union. But we always practiced spiritual Communion, which gave us much spiritual strength and consolation. When then a priest would come, and we were able to confess ourselves, to participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and receive Holy Communion sacramentally, then it was a true feast for us and we experienced in a very deep and joyful manner how precious the gift of the priesthood and the gift of the Eucharist are.”
Bishop Schneider recommends, “One should build up in the Amazon a well-organized system with wandering missionary priests who should go to the individual places – even if only a few times a year – in order to hold a truly spiritual feast with good confessions and with Holy Masses which are celebrated in a dignified manner. They then could also leave Jesus in the tabernacle so that Catholics could adore Him, and one could instruct them how to hold Eucharistic Adoration and how to pray the Rosary with the prayer intention for good indigenous unmarried priests and good Christian families. Then God would give them, without doubt, this grace. One should also make a world-wide request to invite priests to come to the Amazon in order pastorally to assist the people there. One can also ordain married deacons or, in exceptional cases, give tasks to acolytes or to faithful Catholic women who expose the Most Blessed Sacrament and lead the prayers. [Read more at https://lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/2019/09/topsy-and-tuptim-hear-voice-in.html] Thank you, Bishop Schneider!