Tea at Trianon: On Canonical Digits and Eucharistic Particles

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

On Canonical Digits and Eucharistic Particles

From The Liturgy Guy:

“Why does the priest keep his index fingers and thumbs together after consecration?” It’s no doubt a question that some Catholics are asking themselves as an increasing number of priests return to this traditional liturgical practice.

The answer is simple. They do it out of love for Our Lord. They do it to prevent the loss of Eucharistic particles through carelessness. And while the rubrics for the new Mass do not require it, more priests are embracing the historical practice which is required in the traditional Mass.

Answering this very question a few years back, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (blogger Fr. Z) explained that:
…what the priest is doing, by keeping his index and thumbs together, is consistent with what priests have been required by the rubrics to do during Mass after the consecration. Priests are still, in the Extraordinary Form, required to keep index and thumbs pressed together at the “pads”, as it were, lest any recognizable particle that might have adhered to the fingers were to fall some place outside the corporal (the square linen cloth spread out on the altar on which the chalice and Hosts rest). This is also why, after the consecration, the priest was to keep his hand as much as possible over the corporal.
(Read more.)