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May 22, 2022Liked by JD Flynn

I would become a charter subscriber and sponsor of a weekly “Things That Annoy Me” podcast from Ed.

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"Normalize not receiving Communion." Can we make that into a t-shirt, or maybe a button to wear at a conference? I feel like Ed has been eavesdropping on my confessional (not to trivialize such a crime) because I say this to penitents ALL THE TIME. People know that they shouldn't receive but they still do so because there's just this general assumption that people receive all the time. I tell them that whenever someone doesn't receive, I find it encouraging, because it means that they're taking the sacrament seriously. Sure, it might mean that they're in mortal sin. But it could also mean that they walked in super late, or just ate a cheeseburger, or went to mass twice already that day, or any other number of other reasonable things.

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Re normalizing not receiving

Canonist Ed Peters argued on his blog (I'll see if I can find the link) that the Communion fast for Sunday & holy day Masses should be returned to three hours, for a number of reasons, including that because it's practically impossible to break a one-hour fast, to not receive Communion can effectively be to manifest a mortal sin on your conscience. And we don't want that. We definitely don't want to require that.

One of his reasons in favor of the three hour fast was to normalize not receiving. It gives people a totally ordinary and not juicy reason to not receive.

But you can also just go to the Spanish Mass where about 40 percent of attendees receive.

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