WISH I COULD SAY that in the year 2025 all liturgical “myths” have been eliminated—but that’s not true. Indeed, some folks are inventing new myths! For example, on 11 December 2024 Blase Cardinal Cupich published an article attempting to downplay and condemn the current USCCB norms for reception of Holy Communion. Those norms specifically and explicitly say that Catholics can receive kneeling. Cardinal Cupich disagrees with those norms, so he invented a weird theory about the reception of Communion being some sort of “procession” (his word). But there was no “procession” to receive Communion at the Last Supper. Cardinal Cupich seems not to realize that in those days people ate meals reclining.1
I see that my colleague, CORRINNE MAY, has joined the “myth-busting” team. She recently published the following article for the TOTUS TUUS apostolate:
* Corrinne May • Can we choose Marian Hymns for the Offertory?
(1 of 3) Myth Origins • The erroneous claim that Marian songs are forbidden at Mass is familiar to me. There are several explanations for why the myth was created. Today, I’d like to highlight just one. It has to do with tendency that’s developed over the centuries when it comes to printing liturgical books.
(2 of 3) Myth Origins • If you look at ancient liturgical books, most have no headings for the various sections. It’s actually quite confusing until one gets used to it. Nowadays, the opposite is true. Our liturgical books are filled with headings: “Credo, Preface, Offertory, Minor Elevation, Roman Canon, Lord’s Prayer, Consecration, Memento of the Living, Holy Communion,” and so forth. Everything has its own header in our current liturgical books.
(3 of 3) Myth Origins • Certain people—with good intentions, I’m sure—came along and got confused by these headers. For instance, they would notice the OFFERTORY header and declare that everything sung during that time must be related to “offering.”
But such an idea has never
been the tradition of the church.
For instance, look at the Communion antiphons over the last 1,500 years. Very few explicitly have to do with receiving Communion. The same is true of the Offertory antiphons.
Addendum • Corrinne’s article is definitely worth reading. She talks about how she was trained to shoot high-powered rifles!
1 In other words, they ate meals laying down—sort of leaning on one side. This practice seems to have been adopted from the ancient Greeks. Leaving that aside, even if one stands to receive Holy Communion, one must still momentarily stop. Therefore, the procession is stopped whether communicants kneel or stand. Cardinal Cupich would do well to abandon this ill-considered theory he came up with.
