At this last USCCB meeting, the Spring 2021 meeting, setting the agenda resulted in a parliamentary question when a retired Bishop wished to add something to the agenda.  The parliamentarian is Archbishop Schnurr, the Archbishop of Cincinnati.

It was the spring meeting of the NCCB/USCCB in 1977 where the agenda discussion resulted in a parliamentary trick that removed a threshhold question from the motion to seek an indult for communion in the hand … it happened at the hands of the then Archbishop of Cincinnati, Bernadin.

Comments from Bishops and Cardinals in 1977 said that the fraud employed to ram the Communion in the hand vote was a disobedience of bishops and opened an era of “selective discipline.”

Today, the USCCB is discussing what to do about politician that are selectively obedient to Catholicism yet go to Holy Communion as if they were in full communion.

The problem began in 1977 and today’s issue is precisely what those Cardinals and Bishops warned of.  The USCCB cannot fix the problem today without acknowledging the poison in the well caused by Bernadin’s fraud!

Bernadin to Schnurr – Cincinnati – Parliamentary Points of Communion in the Hand and the Selective Discipline it Brung

In our last episode, I mentioned that something happened at the USCCB Spring meeting that seemed to have a providential rub to it.   You know what I’m talking about, right?  When a series of events just seems to have a little too much “coincidence” to be unnoticed.

Fr. Hardon used to say that you cannot believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing God and “chance or coincidence” at the same time. 

The episode before last, I mentioned that I thought that the Bishops should make a statement on Communion in the hand that “they made a mistake, and need to unwind it.”

I promised that I’d explain in this episode, so here I am.

You see, on the first day of the virtual meeting, Bishop Pfeifer, a retired bishop, asked if space on the agenda could be made to discuss the material support President Biden is giving to abortion and infanticide.  That this discussion was important to put into context what giving him Communion means.  God bless Bishop Emeritus Pfeifer.

There was a problem, though, so they consulted the parliamentarian.  I had no idea…  the parliamentarian is Archbishop Schnurr of Cincinnati…

AHA!

I was amazed.  You see, Cardinals Krol and Cardinal Carberry said that the US Bishops passed a “vote” on Communion in the hand because the threshold question had been bypassed through a parliamentary device.  A trick, if you will.

Do I need to remind you that the driver of vote was none other than Bernadin, Archbishop of Cincinnati?

To me, this little moment of coincidence made me want to point it out again…  that the problem we have in denying Holy Communion to a person who publicly supports Abortion and gives material aid to its propagation is precisely rooted in Communion in the hand…

I’ll explain, but I want to point this out:  To this day, the USCCB gives an award every year, titled the “Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award”

In their own words, the USCCB describes it:

The Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award, an activity of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, recognizes the leadership, energy and diverse skills that young people bring to the anti-poverty work of low-income projects and Catholic parishes.