If you’re living and breathing in 2024, you doubtlessly already know that our culture is awash in confusion about what it means to be human. In a way like never before, clichés like “my body, my choice,” “love is love,” “gender is not binary,” or “live your truth” have become exhaustingly pervasive in our social interactions. The fact that such contradictions have been so rapidly and blindly embraced underscores the growing urgency for the Church to present a compelling rival vision of what it means to be human.
In my capacity as professor and co-director of the Center for Integral Ecology at Benedictine College, I recently had the privilege of sharing a meal with our guest Fr. José Granados, a dynamic speaker who has been working diligently to articulate precisely this kind of alternative. Granados is an iconic figure for me as a biblical theologian because he co-edited a most important (but not widely enough known) book containing essential texts from Joseph Ratzinger on how to interpret Scripture from a robustly Catholic perspective. But, the reason I mention him now is that he recently collaborated with Fr. Livio Melina to edit a pivotal new volume entitled La verità dell’amore: Tracce per un cammino. The collection contains many noteworthy essays, and this installment of my “God’s Two Books” column takes its bearing from one in particular: a previously unpublished essay by Pope Benedict XVI entitled “The Christian Image of Man (L’immagine cristiana dell’uomo).”1
This invaluable handwritten text of twelve pages was composed by Benedict XVI in early 2020, shortly before his death, and represents his contribution to the Veritas Amoris Project. Founded in 2019 by Livio Melina and José Granados in the aftermath of their dismissal (connected with the restructuring of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Rome), the Veritas Amoris Project is an association of scholars committed to the affirmation of “the truth of love as a key to understanding the mystery of God, the human person and the world, convinced that this perspective provides an integral and fruitful pastoral approach.” As Benedict’s former secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein writes in a notable preface to the volume, this framework reflects the heart of Benedict’s theology, for “the relationship between truth and love is central to the entirety of Benedict’s teaching.”
In addition to Gänswein’s preface, the volume also includes a valuable general introduction composed by Melina and Granados, along with introductory remarks on Benedict’s text offered by Melina. As the latter recounts, Benedict considered the sweeping changes at the John Paul II Institute “unjust and unacceptable.” Having sought in vain to get those responsible to reconsider, Benedict threw his support behind the Veritas Amoris Project. Seeing its development as essential for carrying forward his and John Paul II’s teachings on the unity of truth and love, the emeritus pope wished not only to advise the Project but also to contribute to it theologically.
Toward this end, the pontiff described his essay on the Christian image of man as a “conceptual outline” for the Project’s research and teaching agenda. As he explained, this program is informed by three primary reference points: St. John Paul II’s theology of the body, Benedict’s own theology of love, and Pope Francis’s pastoral approach.
The relational nature of man
At the foundation of his quest to illuminate the unity of truth and love, Benedict’s vision begins with an understanding of man as inherently relational.
One of the significant truths we’ve forgotten in our society is that no one lives and dies alone. From our parents who conceived us to our friends who brighten our days to the animals and plants whose deaths sustain us, interdependence is an ineluctable feature of human existence. For his part, Benedict writes that it also specifically pertains to the essence of what it means to be God’s image. “Being an image,” he says, is “being in relation.”
Contending that relatio can be regarded as “a fundamental definition of man,” the pontiff notes that the fundamental, observable reality of our interconnectedness with others aligns remarkably with “the fundamental idea of God who, as Trinity, is an interplay of relations and not an isolated substance.” As we witness in this text, Benedict envisioned reality as an intricate web of interconnected relationships spanning every level. In fact, on another occasion, the renowned theologian went so far as to maintain that this structure that relation “stands beside substance as an equally primordial form of being.”
Moreover, he understood that this claim is not something derived solely from theology, but also revealed in God’s “other book”—the book of nature. On this score, he notes that the theological insight that relation lies at the heart of reality “corresponds no less strikingly with the findings of modern physics, according to which no substance exists in isolation and that everything exists in relationship.”2
An unrealistic moral standard?
For me, a particularly delightful feature of this brief text by our late pontiff was witnessing his renewed engagement with a 1391 A.D. debate between Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a learned Persian concerning the truth claims of Christianity and Islam. As many readers will recall, Benedict famously (and, in some circles, infamously) referenced this dispute in his landmark 2006 Regensburg Address.
In that setting, the pontiff cited this dialogue to open up a conversation on the issue of religious violence. Toward that end, he challenged Muslims to clarify their position on the relationship between religion and violence, leading with the Christian emperor’s bold assertion that the law inaugurated by Muhammad centuries had in actuality “pillaged” and “plagiarized” its teachings from its Jewish and Christian forebears: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached” (§2.c, §27.c).3
This time around, Benedict foregrounds a different topic within this same exchange, the 7th in a series of 26 such conversations between the emperor and the anonymous Muslim mudarris (teacher). Having debated a variety of matters where they stood in firm opposition with one another, both interlocutors ultimately concurred that the crux of their divergence centers on which religion offers the correct image of man. Rehearsing a trope that one often encounters in an Islamic context, the Persian claims that Christianity’s image of man is unrealistic—“heavy, excessive, and impracticable”—imposing unattainable moral demands that are bound to result in failure (§5.c). After all, the thinking goes, what man is “made of iron or diamond” so as to be capable of loving his enemies, turning the other cheek when wronged, or honoring a lifelong commitment made in the idealism of youth? (§5.e). In particular, the mudarris considers the Christian discipline of vowed virginity a “totally unbearable” and “violent” burden that suffers from the “obvious” problem of being “outside the realm of reason” insofar as it asks an incarnate creature to “imitate the nature of bodiless beings” (§5.f).
According to this line of thinking, we might as well openly permit divorce and certain forms of violence while seeking ways to regulate them, given that we will never be able to completely prevent people from partaking in such behaviors. In this regard, the Muslim contends, “The law of Muhamad is the middle way,” as it proclaims “moderate” precepts that are “much more bearable and humane…For it fills in by its own precepts what was lacking in the old law, but trims the excesses of the law of Christ” (§5.b). In this way, he argues that Islamic morality aligns more closely with the wisdom of ancient philosophers like Aristotle, being “better than all laws” because it “avoids both extremes, honoring the mean in everything” (§5.c–d).
In response to this viewpoint, the emperor contends that Islam’s seeming realism demands too little of man, effectively preventing him from rising to his full greatness. Contrary to Islam, the Christian believes that with God all things are indeed possible because “the hand of God invisibly assists them in carrying them out” (§9.b). Manuel thus explains that we can indeed live the Beatitudes and attain spiritual perfection thanks to the grace of Christ, who “does not recommend impossible things” (19.f).
Taking into account the gap between the Christian vision of human perfection and the various views present in other religious and secular contexts, Benedict draws the following lesson from this conversation: “[T]he question concerning the correct image of man emerges as the fundamental practical question in the clash between Christianity and the antichrist.” From here, the pontiff sharpens his focus and puts forward a thesis that he revisited often throughout his career: “In my view, the central point of this confrontation will be the question of freedom.”4
A contemporary contradiction regarding freedom
As in the Regensburg Address, Benedict here uses the Christianity-Islam debate as a segue to introduce his primary theme. The key issue he really wants to address doesn’t concern how human freedom is understood in Islam, but rather the prevailing view of man in present-day Western society, in which “freedom means total indeterminacy, lacking content and directives.” This is the notion that we should be free to do whatever we want and whenever we want—without suffering any undesired consequences. However, as Benedict notes, this novel concept of freedom has led to a “curious situation” for the enlightened and liberated individual of today. He identifies this contradictory state of affairs as follows:
[O]n the one hand, the natural sciences claim to have discovered the complete determinacy of man, which is, of course, accepted by all those who believe in science. At the same time, however—and in complete contradiction with this—a radical thesis of human freedom continues to be asserted and practiced.
Benedict has exposed a profound aporia at the heart of the scientism and libertinism that dominate our present cultural context. On the one hand, scientific naturalism posits that human behavior is entirely dictated by our physiology, rendering free will an illusion. On the other hand, the same people who assume this stance are sometimes of the persuasion that our human identity is wholly dependent on our own will—as claimed by those who believe that our God-given biological constitution is irrelevant to our sexual identity. Yet Pope Benedict rightly insists that something has to give. Our behavior can’t be both wholly determined in advance by our empirical constitution and utterly undetermined prior to our own decisions.5
Of course, the pope was well aware that man’s abuse of his freedom is nothing new. Nevertheless, he observes that the concept of freedom has recently been pushed “to a radicalism that was previously unimaginable,” resulting in a scenario in which “radical worldliness is proving to be the dominant vision” of contemporary society. Echoing insights he had previously expressed on a number of occasions, in the twilight of his life the pontiff offered one final analysis of the shift that has occurred:
Indeed, it is now denied that, as a free being, man is in any way bound to a nature that defines the scope of his freedom. Man now no longer has a nature but makes himself. Human nature no longer exists. It is man alone who decides what he is, male or female. Man now produces man himself and thus determines the destiny of a being that no longer comes from the hands of a Creator God but from the laboratory of human invention.
As Benedict and his saintly predecessor frequently stressed, the eclipse of the sense of God tends to result in the loss of the sense of man (see, for example, John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, §21). The emeritus pontiff here frames this point in this way: “The abolition of the Creator as the abolition of man thus becomes the true threat to faith.” And, to reinforce just how central the dying pontiff considered this matter, he described the effort to confront it concisely and unequivocally: “This is the great task now facing theology.”
While he has entrusted this mission to those who will follow in his footsteps, Benedict seized the opportunity afforded by this letter to offer a few concrete indications of what a positive response to our crisis ought to look like. With this objective, he begins by acknowledging that nature and freedom “at first seem to be in irreconcilable opposition.” According to Benedict, what allows us to overcome this apparent incompatibility is the knowledge that human nature “carries the Logos within itself” and can even be regarded as “designed.”6 In other words, “[H]uman freedom is a created freedom. This means that within himself, man carries a purpose that aligns with his nature, that is, with his being an image of God.”
Yes, we are free, says Benedict. But, because we are creatures endowed with specific natures, it is not an absolute freedom. As a human person, my nature is going to be fulfilled through free actions that correspond to my nature as a rational animal. Exercising my freedom to live in a way that mirrors the behavior of a dog, horse, spider, or even chimpanzee is simply not going to cut it.
Aristotle knew this centuries before the revelation of Christ. According to this great philosopher, humans are born with “natural inclinations” that we can’t help but have. By nature, we cannot help but desire food, safety, sex, knowledge, and loving relationships. How we go about pursuing these goods is another matter, but we are not free to choose whether we or not we want them. Likewise, whether one likes it or not, a person is born either male or female. While one may (even quite dramatically) alter accidental features of his or her life, nothing a person does will change that fundamental reality. Many more examples could be given, but I’ll leave it at that for now. As Benedict puts it, “I believe it is in this context, then, that the question of sexuality and its authentically human development must also be addressed. The entire range of issues related to human sexuality lies here.”7
Our predicament requires an answer both theoretical and practical
Benedict wraps up his missive by emphasizing a theme that he regularly revisited when confronting challenges to the Church’s vision of man amidst a culture that is largely indifferent or hostile to the gospel. Specifically, the Bavarian wunderkind understood that Christianity’s truth claims regarding the nature of love will fail to persuade unless those who proclaim them embody that love in their lives. One of the most often recurring phrases in Benedict’s ministry is that the true apologia for the faith rests in the beauty and the saints that the Church has generated across the ages. Here, the pontiff states quite plainly that our theology will be able to compellingly rise to this occasion only “if the example of Christian life proves stronger than the force of the denials that surround us and promise a false freedom.”8
In this connection, it is important to note that, in speaking of saints, Benedict has in mind something quite different from “the pietistic and kitsch stereotypes of the ‘plaster saints’” who appear removed from the realities of ordinary life.9 He therefore made a firm call for the Church to avoid adopting a “ghetto” or “fortress” mentality—a “narrow, fearful existence closed off from the world.”10 At the same time, he highlighted the danger of falling prey to a “simple, uncritical acceptance of today’s world.” 11 For the Christian in the present moment, the challenge lies in discovering how to live in the world and work for the good of the world, yet without being conformed to the world—in short, “to stand openly amid the drama of his own time to lead the world back to Christ.”12
Finally, I’d like to mention one last thing lest we interpret Benedict’s focus on the lived experience of faith in an anti-intellectualist way. Despite being an intellectual giant, for this simple soul the solution to our present-day challenge concerning the image of man can ultimately be found only in the person of Jesus Christ, not in intricate explanations embedded within a system of thought. Nevertheless, he stressed that this recognition should not deter us from striving to develop precisely these types of answers.
And, with that, it is only appropriate to let Benedict have the last word: “The awareness that it is impossible to resolve such a problem solely on a theoretical level certainly does not exempt us from striving to propose a solution, even at the level of thought.” 13
Endnotes:
1 As with my previous articles on Benedict’s works that are not yet available in English, the translations of this article presented here are mine.
2 Benedict XVI, “L’immagine cristiana dell’uomo,” 31. Benedict’s vision of man as inherently relational is of one piece with his broader personalist outlook in which he examines all manner of theological subjects in a relational key. For a thorough treatment of these themes, see my book From the Dust of the Earth: Benedict XVI, the Bible, and the Theory of Evolution (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022).
3 For this citation of Manuel II, I have reproduced the Vatican translation from Benedict’s Regensburg Address. For other citations of this dialogue (to which Benedict alludes without citing), I have consulted the translations made by Joseph Kenny, O.P. and Roger Pearse, as well as the Greek-French Sources Chrétiennes version in Manuel II Palaiologos, Entretiens avec un Musulman: 7e Controverse, trans. Théodore Khoury (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1966). To maintain consistency, I have used Kenny’s translations throughout this piece and provided parenthetical references to the pertinent sections of the dialogue.
4 Benedict XVI, “L’immagine cristiana dell’uomo,” 32.
5 Ibid., 33.
6 Ibid., 36.
7 Ibid., 33.
8 Ibid., 36. For an extended discussion of Benedict’s thought surrounding the Church’s perennial witness of beauty and holiness as the most convincing apologia for Christianity, see my book The Experiment of Faith: Pope Benedict XVI on Living the Theological Virtues in a Secular Age (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020).
9 Benedict XVI, “L’immagine cristiana dell’uomo,” 33.
10 Ibid., 34.
11 Ibid., 35.
12 Ibid., 34.
13 Ibid., 36.
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This is magnificent, that Benedict XVI would return to themes developed in his 2006 Regensburg Address, and the Christian Image of Man.
Two outside and supporting Quotes, plus a Question:
FIRST, about the defining quality of human “freedom,” a most prominent Western scholar of Islam offers this:
“To a Western observer, schooled in the theory and practice of Western freedom, it is precisely the lack of freedom—freedom of the mind from constraint and indoctrination, to question and inquire and speak; freedom of the economy from corrupt and pervasive mismanagement, freedom of women from male oppression; freedom of citizens from tyranny—that underlies so many of the troubles of the Muslim world. But the road to democracy, as the Western experience amply demonstrates, is long and hard, full of pitfalls and obstacles” (Bernard Lewis, “What Went Wrong?” Harper Perennial, 2003).
SECOND, about the theology of human “free will,” Islam denies this image of Man but then rationalizes our Christian self-deception by explaining that a deterministic Allah still allows us to “think” we have free will. However, one Muslim voice in 1956 got the picture more clearly than even some later Council fathers:
“It all comes down to knowing whether one should hold strictly to the fundamental religious values which were those of Abraham and Moses, on pain of falling into blasphemy—as the Muslims believe; or whether God has called men to approach him more closely, revealing to them little by little their fundamental condition as sinful men, and the forgiveness that transforms them and prepares them for the beatific vision—as Christian dogma teaches.” (El Akkad in 1956, as cited by historian and Council observer Jean Guitton, “The Great Heresies and Church Councils”, 1965).
THIRD, and about freewheeling confusion pedaled by some contemporary theologians, where Nicaea in A.D. 325 explored the Triune nature of God, what exactly can we expect 1700 years later from the celebration of Nicaea in A.D. 2025 about the nature of Man?
Was Nicaea more about forwardist amnesia and synodal “inclusiveness,” or was it about anamnesis toward what has always been believed, and therefore exclusion (!) of Arius—by the Successors of the Apostles? That is, concurrent with next year’s celebration, what are we to hear from the ten post-synodal Study Groups on “hot button issues”? Especially #9 charged with developing “[t]heological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal [!], pastoral [!], and ethical [!] issues”?
the issue i see as the greatest victory of satan is ,”the right to choose”; that is “ my body, my choice “ in the ruin of souls. it is the cheapening of life that is apparent all around us and even by the sword as you describe. to think one has the right to extinguish life either at birth or in old age or anywhere in between is an abomination. we are created in Gods image, in the image of Christ himself. we do not have the right to “choose “ . at the moment of conception one has a soul that has been given us by God and that fact is what needs to be defended by the church. the dignity of life has to be expressed from the pulpit. this is not a political issue, this is an edict from Christ himself. until such issues are addressed from the pulpit to the people we will continue to see congregations diminish. many will not like what they hear, so be it, they may even leave the church but as Christ himself came to disrupt the status quo , we must do the same. let us begin with the fight to abolish abortion. let us begin with life itself !
Matthew Ramage, Fr Granados highlight Benedict XVI’s primary premise, the historical-critical interpretation of Scripture in contrast to faith in revelation. This was addressed by journalist writer Sandro Magister’s essay The True Jesus drawn from a series of letters, short essays covering a very lengthy series of discussions between Cdl Ratzinger [up until he was Benedict XVI] and philosopher Jürgen Habermas. A primary difference is the researched written book form by Fr Granados. The essential difference here is how Benedict’s efforts impinge on The Christian Image of Man. A “lived experience” of faith [a note on the term lived experience, bandied about as a progressive woke terminology which of course it is not as addressed here].
True Love [referenced in the Frs Melina and Granados joint effort the Veritas Amoris Project] and the true Christ are synonymous [A correction of Ramage on inclinations, which he describes as desires for food, sex are actually our natural appetites, the latter distinguished by Aquinas from the inclinations of these basic, inborn desires or appetites inclined by reason to their proper end]. Significantly, Man is seen as being relational to others, forthwith the ground for Christian love. Ramage isolates this defining doctrine found in Benedict XVI and addressed by Granados/Melina.
This Christian understanding of Man distinguishes the Christian milieu, and contradicts the Muslim understanding of violence and death as a just means of spreading religion. Regensburg struck lightning on the basic error of Mohammed and the scourge the West is dealing with today [whereas in my own forbearers experience when Sicily was an emirate, Arabs brought political socio structure, irrigation, the arts, this feature of rendering the infidel as unworthy of life and fit for slavery or death led to its collapse with the arrival of Norman Robert de Guiscard, known also as Robert de Hautville and a comparatively small Norman brigade].
Benedict presents an important principle, that in order to spread the truth of the faith Man must first live it. In respect to the fear expressed in this essay regards the dismal incorporation we find today of Man into the secular world. That is avoided by remaining adhered by our relation to the person of Christ. It is in Christ that we find what Man is, in his potency to become what is beyond his human nature. The grace filled image of who Christ is.
Yours truly proposes that violence entered Islam through completion at Medina (after A.D. 622) of the TWO Pledges of Aqabah, and not before (Muhammad was 52). In the first pledge, the Bedouins of Medina promise to protect Muhammad from likely assassins from Mecca; then in the second pledge Muhammad transitions from religious preacher to warlord in multi-tribal Arabia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_career_of_Muhammad
Conquest, then, is based on the intertribal promise to no longer despoil each other, but instead to expand into the regional power vacuum left by decades of exhausting warfare between the Byzantines and Persia. The second Pledge of Aqabah, a pivot point for Arabia and then all of subsequent Western history? (Arabia had known tens of thousands of earlier prophets, all of them soon forgotten.)
About “the Muslim understanding of violence and death,” Islam is a muddled natural religion, conceptually and in practice, in that the Qur’an is subject to “reading and rereading [even abrogation]”–not much unlike ambulatory “process theology” issuing from equally muddled Christians…
“Islam has not wanted to choose between Heaven and Earth. It proposed instead a blending of heaven and earth, sex and mysticism [!], war and proselytism, conquest and apostolate [!]. In more general terms, Islam proposed a blending of the spiritual and the temporal worlds which neither in Islam nor among the pagans have ever been divided” (Jean Guitton, “Great Heresies and Church Councils,” 1965, p. 116).
QUESTION” What does it mean, synodally, to both verbally affirm moral “doctrine” and, at the same time, to “pastorally” and consensually detach and signal contradictory exemptions, e.g., Fiducia Supplicans? Surely “not a parliament,” but maybe a “rump parliament,” almost literally so?
Cosmopolitan Islam now under a red hat instead of a turban?
And then there’s the serpentine path of original sin (as recognized by Christians) through all things great and small, including the big pivot points of history.
Specifically, the always conjoined humiliation and then “pride,” and then defensive and then offensive warfare of the folk-hero/prophet Muhammad. What if he had not been humiliated and driven from Mecca, largely because his monotheism threatened the local trinket-trade economy with pilgrims traveling each year to venerate the 360 pagan deities of the Ka’ba?
We might consider the view of historian John Bagot Glubb (and Lieutenant-General in colonial Transjordan, 1939-1956): “It is quite possible that this campaign of defamation did the Apostle more good than harm…the hostile remarks which the Qurayish leaders took such trouble to disseminate among the pilgrims may perhaps have served to enhance Muhammad’s importance and to carry his name to distant parts of Arabia.” Indeed, far beyond 7th-century Arabia and into the Third Millennium.
Challenge is in store for the true believer. His truth, defined in adherence to the Christ of the Gospels, Christ as understood by the Apostles, the Magisterium through the centuries to the present moment of ambiguity, discordance with tradition. Indeed, how far must we engage as partners with a secular world to preserve Christlike authenticity?
Paul, the other Apostles taught we should respect authority, the ministers of justice appointed by the Romans, to pray for the emperor. Roman culture at the time had a viable system of justice which Paul himself would benefit. After all we would not have a Cicero or Virgil unless justice was appreciated as a universal, as Cicero said it would be equal in Rome as in Athens. However, our present climate is more complex, and deadly. We’re drawn into a political system that is open to the mass execution of infants in the womb, the surgical mutilation of our children to reverse nature, the natural law itself. An avowed Catholic president who makes the sign of the cross as approval of a detestable abortion rights bill. And a maverick non Catholic president elect whose expertise is deal making whatever it might be for beneficial success. A victim of a politically weaponized justice system who prefers justice for all including Catholics who were considered quasi terrorists by the Catholic president’s administration. Where does this anomalous trend leave the man seeking to live a life in the image of Christ?
We can forge a path if it realizes boundaries some of which are the proverbial redline do not trespass. Difficulty is where and how. Except for the lesser evil case as in the election, or when casting a vote on some issue the inviolable parameters must be evident as anti Christian, antiChrist. It’s a matter of prudential judgment that was best addressed by the previous two pontificates rather than the present. The present is all sugar and no fight, the former is salt and martyrdom.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was kneeling before the Will of the Father. An angel came to minister to Him in His prostration. Then he would be standing when the time had arrived for action. When He said to those with Him “Get up and pray” He had already identified praying with kneeling; and He was admonishing them for being asleep in which state they had missed what had just been revealed.
Over the past 50+ years the reaction against kneeling is seated in rebellion and arrogance and it infects forward so that those involved today know themselves.
The is every reason to be kneeling ahead of the Epiclesis until it is time to go for Communion and then again until the Dismissal. This is how I had been at Mass for decades when a murmuring developed behind my back, against me. In fact, during all that time it had become a commonplace for the congregation (everywhere) to be kneeling until after the Doxology when people would stand for the Our Father. Then one day around 2010 or so one woman stood up after the Consecration and said out loud in a stentorian voice, “But it says we should be standing!”
I’ve read Cupich’s recent letter on processing during liturgy. Cupich is reductive, using community for ceremonialism absent of any presence whether of divine or of human-personal or of relational. He really is affected by something away from the faith, I think. The ordinary reaction to someone so is to remark that he is backward-minded. But the extraction of presence from liturgy is “anti-thesis” and a work of Modernity.
Pakaluk has pointed out Cupich’s error in equating proceeding toward communion and processions like Rosary processions or carrying the Blessed Sacrament in procession.
‘ And then note the distinction in English between, on the one hand, “processing,” and, on the other, “walking in a procession.” The former means simply moving forward with others rather than walking back (“recessing”). The latter means the deliberate formation of a group that conceives of itself as walking together.
The latter is what Redemptionis Sacramentum means in the only passages in which it speaks of “processions.” For instance, it enjoins “devout participation of the faithful in the eucharistic procession on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ.” (n. 143) The latter, too, is what the priests and acolytes do at start of the Mass. The latter is what the laity also do, when they bring up offerings during the Mass. But most definitely the former, in contrast, is what the laity do when they go up to receive Communion.
“The Priest then takes the paten or ciborium and approaches the communicants, who usually come up in procession,” so says the General Instruction on the Roman Missal. (n. 160) But this is just to say that typically they come forward. That is to say, they no longer follow the most ancient form of Communion, mentioned in the Catechism, which is distribution: “When he who presides has given thanks and the people have responded, those whom we call deacons give to those present the ‘eucharisted’ bread, wine and water and take them to those who are absent.” (n. 1345)
The Cardinal conflates these two distinct things when he writes, “This is why we process into the church, process up to bring the gifts, process to receive Holy Communion and process out at the end of Mass to carry the Lord into the world.” No, the faithful “process forward” to receive Communion but do not do so “in a procession.” ‘
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/12/19/on-processions-and-family-norms/
‘ ….. if I were the devil and wanted to set out to destroy belief in Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, I could not have done a better job than the geniuses who removed all the altar rails, busied our sanctuaries with troops of Eucharistic and other ministers, and turned the Communion procession into an assembly line on which the watchword is “keep moving!” ‘
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/12/31/it-shouldnt-take-a-genius/