Will the Francis Revolution Last?

A reader wrote in in regard to the previous posting:

Do you have an idea of what percent of the cardinals and bishops support Francis?

Not everyone 

gets the style.

The simple answer is “No,” but this calls for a response that is far more complicated than can appear in a reply posting.  This is a classic example of trying to read the data and write the history as it is unfolding.  As for those who support or don’t support the direction Pope Francis is moving in, it is somewhat easier to get a read on the Cardinals than on the bishops as the Cardinals are fewer in number and far less able to conceal their opinions but even in the case of the Cardinals, there is a “silent majority” that is very difficult to second guess to what extent they support Pope Francis’ agenda for reform. 

Let’s look first as what a Conclave might look should Francis’ papacy come to an end in the next six months. (God Forbid, I might add.)  There are 120 Cardinals eligible to vote in the next conclave.  As of the most recent consistory with its newest class of Cardinals we have 30 potential electors who were appointed by Pope John Paul II.  We have 59 electors appointed by Pope Benedict XVI.  And we have 31 electors who were appointed by Pope Francis.  We can surmise that the Cardinals, to some extent, reflect the thought of the Pope who appointed them.  But again we have to be careful.  One of Francis’ strongest critics regarding his desire to find a “pastoral solution” to the problem of the divorced and remarried receiving the sacraments is Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith.  But Müller is a Francis appointee.  Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, on the other hand, is perhaps Francis’ most trusted right-hand man and is a John Paul appointee. 

What the numbers, arranged by the Pope who appointed the Cardinals, show is just how fast the complexion of the College can change.  With only two “classes” of his nominees, Francis already has appointed more members of the College than John Paul.  Probably with two more classes, three at the most, his nominees will have a simple majority in the College.  This will presumably make a return to the pre-Francis days far more difficult. 

But all is not smooth sailing.  Last year before the Synod, five Cardinals wrote a book, Remaining In The Truth of Christ, in order to stall Francis’ agenda.   This year eleven Cardinals teamed to write: Eleven Cardinals Speak on Marriage and the Family: Essays From A Pastoral Viewpoint.  One of the authors of the second book, Cardinal Basileos Cleemis of India, is only 56 years old.  He will be voting in conclaves for 24 more years.  Another, Cardinal William Jacobus Eijk, has 18 more years.  This means that they will probably play a role not only in choosing Francis’s successor, but his successor’s successor—and perhaps even a third and fourth successor.  Cleemis is a Benedict appointee as is Eijk. 

There is no doubt that whatever opinions you hold the next Conclave is going to be a “Battle for the Soul of the Church.”  The most articulate of Francis’ supporters, Walter Kasper, is too old to vote or even to be in the Conclave.  The Francis faction will probably be led by Cardinals Maradiaga, Marx, Tagle and Schönborn.  The anti Francis, or perhaps better the “reverse direction” party will be led by Raymond Burke (who can participate in conclaves until 2028), aided by Malcolm Ranjith of Sri Lanka.  There are a number of Cardinals, including Müller, who are opposed to Francis’ agenda on finding ways to allow people in irregular unions a deeper participation in the Church’s sacramental life, but who are on board with the wider Francis’ agenda.  While the “reverse direction” faction may have only a few spokespersons within the Sacred College, I suspect that there is enough of a “silent majority” to have an impact on the election and the direction of the Church.  While I doubt there will be an attempt to go back to the Church Triumphant model of the last papacy, I think there are enough doctrinal hard-liners in the Sacred College to want very clear guidelines on the limits of pastoral outreach to the LGBT community and to the divorced and remarried.  I think there will be stronger support for tighter liturgical discipline or at least for those who want the optional use of the pre-conciliar rites.   Francis has thrown a few bones to the liturgical conservatives but he is clearly not interested in any return to the pre-Conciliar rites.  Nor do I think is he interested in advancing further reforms in the Liturgy despite his own pastoral style.  I suspect his successor will be a man who in naming bishops divides the power a bit more evenly than Francis has.  On the other hand, each Pope of recent years has “stacked” the College to some extent with men who think like himself. 

This brings us from the Cardinals down to the bishops.  Francis is clearly appointing men who comprehend his agenda of a more simple Church.  The Chicago appointment (Archbishop Cupich) is particularly telling.  It will be even more telling the next time red hats get passed around to see among the Americans who gets one and who doesn’t.  Many of the American bishops have expressed—usually off the record except for Bishop Tobin of Providence—a dismay at the change in style and tone set by Francis.  The American hierarchy are particularly conservative, however.  On the other hand, American Cardinal-Archbishops Dolan, O’Malley, Wuerl, DiNardo are pretty much following Francis’ lead.  O’Malley is particularly interesting as he is one of Francis’ most trusted advisor—and rightly so, a man of exceptional talent—yet he pretty much stands above the fray whereas Dolan is an Irish street-fighter and gets down and gets dirty.  Wuerl too doesn’t mind skating out onto thin ice in following Francis’ lead.  We need to see more new bishops to get a good read on Francis and what he is doing with the American hierarchy.  I will be surprised to see Lori of Baltimore get his coveted red hat in this papacy but Chaput—despite his rigid conservativism—might as a reward for the upcoming World Meeting of Families.  It will be interesting and, if he doesn’t get the hat, very telling.  There are some key dioceses that need to be filled and it will also tell us a lot whom Francis chooses.  I am particularly interested in Arlington Virginia whose bishop turns 75 this month and whose diocese has long proved to be somewhat unmanageable with obdurate clergy who live in a time warp, convinced that it is 1955. 

I have painted this with a pretty broad brush—there is a lot one could write or say on it and a lot of subtlety I have glided over.  Let’s say in summary that Francis is building a College of Cardinals that wear his colors; but it takes longer to get that same impact on the world’s bishops.  Let’s hope the man has the time to do it.  

Foundations of the Anglican Church C

Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham

MA, an example of Puritan worship

space.

Robert Browne (c1555-1633) had studied at Cambridge where he fell under Puritan influence.  He served as a Lecturer at Saint Mary’s Church, Islington—at the time a wealthy suburb of London and today right smack in the middle of London.  A Lecturer was a lay preacher—a man with sufficient theological education to preach but not ordained.  Lecturers were very popular among the Puritan segment of the Church of England which stressed preaching, while the Episcopal faction generally preferred to limit preaching to those in Holy Orders and so tie it closer to formal worship.  It should be pointed out that the clergy of the Church of England, even before the Reformation, were all University men, educated at either Oxford or Cambridge.  Cambridge had always been the more theologically radical and what one might today call “low Church.”   Browne returned to Cambridge after several years at Saint Mary’s Islington and was encouraged to take Holy Orders, but shortly after ordination gave up hope that the Church of England could be reformed from within.  He attempted to set up a separatist congregation at Norwich—that is an independent congregation not under the bishop but ruled by its own members—and was arrested for doing so.  Powerful family connections won him his freedom but not tolerance of his ambitions for a separate Church. He and his followers moved to Middleburg in the Netherlands where they could form an independent congregation.  Browne and others like him believed that the Churches of the New Testament were such independent congregations, each having their own pastor and each being self-governing.  Browne was reacting against two things: the authority of the State over the Church and its policies (remember, the Church of England was a State Church and thus governed by Parliament) and an established hierarchy in which bishops had authority over a number of congregations, thus usurping the authority of the congregation’s local pastor.  Browne’s understanding of primitive Church governance was a bit naively romantic, but at the same time was closer to the post-Apostolic Church of the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries than the diocesan authority structures of either contemporary Catholicism of Anglicanism. 

In any event, Browne soon gave up on his separatist notions and returned to the Church of England which he served as headmaster of several schools and rector of Achurch in Northamptonshire.  (Achurch is the name of the parish.)  He died within the Anglican Communion though he had founded the separatist movement.  

Richard Clyfton was an Anglican priest of the Puritan faction appointed to the Church of All Saints, Babworth.  Despite his holding a benefice in the Church of England, he followed Browne and became a Separatist.  Among the members of his congregation which met at Scrooby Manor was William Bradford who was one of the leaders of the Pilgrim emigration to Massachusetts Bay. 

While the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth were Separatists and rejected the authority of the Church of England—both its bishops and its supervision by Parliament—the majority of settlers in Massachusetts Bay Colony were Puritans who in the 1620’s and 30’s still considered themselves members of the Church of England.  However as under James, and even more under his son, Charles I, (reigned from 1625 until his execution in 1649), the Church of England moved increasingly away from the Calvinist/Puritan ideals towards a recovery of its Catholic liturgical heritage and Arminian doctrine; consequently the co-existence of the Puritan faction and the Episcopal faction in the same Church of England became more and more strained.  In the New England colonies there were no bishops and no royal officials who could insist on worship conforming to the Book of Common Prayer.  Ministers and Congregations were free to do more or less as they wished, while back in England non-conformity was dealt with with an increasing severity.  It was only a matter of time until the tension between the two factions would set off an explosion that would shatter the Church of England.  And it would do more than that, it would bring down the monarchy. 

I think this is a particularly important period for us to look at.  Increasingly since the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church, at least in the English speaking world (and too a lesser extent in France and Germany) has also seen a division between two distinct visions of Church.  This is not totally new, at least here in the United States where the recusant tradition of the old Maryland Catholics gave a markedly different Catholicism than the immigrant tradition brought over from France during the French Revolution and later from the German, Italian, and Eastern European Catholics who settled here in the 19^th century.  The different Episcopal styles of Ambrose Maréchal and John England in the early 19^th century or the conflicts between Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Corrigan in the late 19^th century witness to two distinct—and to some extent incompatible—ecclesiologies in American Catholicism.  Today we see the Church of Cardinals Burke and Archbishop Cordileone and Bishop Finn and its very different style than the Church of Cardinal O’Malley and Archbishop Cupich.   Like the Church of England in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries we can live together in the same broad communion, but how far will this last without breaking?  Certainly Burke or O’Malley or Cordileone or Finn or Cupich will never break bonds with Peter in Rome and thus with one another, but there is a rising tension among priests and peoples that might easily snap the cords, each accusing those of the other side of betraying the tradition.  As a historian I think that not only is schism a possibility but that it is all but inevitable unless we are willing to allow for a pluriformity of Catholicisms in which legitimate differences of discipline and even doctrine are respected.  A rigid uniformity, on the other hand, will be very detrimental to the future of the Church.  

Let Whomever Has Ears With Which To Hear, Hear

Pope Francis preaching on
Immigration at Lampedusa, July
2013

The issue of the day is the destiny of the men, women, and especially children that have come to the southern borders of our country looking for safety, for a better life, and to belong to a society which they see as far greater than that in which they had been born.  No one important—of either political party, of the Congress or the Presidency or the Judiciary, of the governors of the various states or their peoples—are ready to give them a welcome.  To the contrary, hostile mobs surround the busses that are meant to transport them to the “processing centers” demanding that they be thrown back across the border and never allowed a future in this country.  I can understand that.  This is a land of limited opportunity.  As the gulf between the those who have and those who have not grows wider and wider; as the middle class slides steadily into a life of less while the few rich grow even more obscenely rich, there is barely enough for you and for me; how can we allow the little that is left be stretched even further?  Perhaps we should look back at the homily that Pope Francis gave just over a year ago at Lampedusa  about the immigrants that are flooding the shores of Europe.  Yes, he was talking about immigration to Europe and we are talking about immigration to our nation, you objection is?  No, these words are meant for us as well. 

HOMILY OF HOLY FATHER FRANCIS



"Arena" sports camp, Salina Quarter
Monday, 8 July 2013

 Immigrants dying at sea, in boats which were vehicles of hope and became vehicles of death. That is how the headlines put it. When I first heard of this tragedy a few weeks ago, and realized that it happens all too frequently, it has constantly come back to me like a painful thorn in my heart. So I felt that I had to come here today, to pray and to offer a sign of my closeness, but also to challenge our consciences lest this tragedy be repeated. Please, let it not be repeated! First, however, I want to say a word of heartfelt gratitude and encouragement to you, the people of Lampedusa and Linosa, and to the various associations, volunteers and security personnel who continue to attend to the needs of people journeying towards a better future. You are so few, and yet you offer an example of solidarity! Thank you! I also thank Archbishop Francesco Montenegro for all his help, his efforts and his close pastoral care. I offer a cordial greeting to Mayor Giusi Nicolini: thank you so much for what you have done and are doing. I also think with affection of those Muslim immigrants who this evening begin the fast of Ramadan, which I trust will bear abundant spiritual fruit. The Church is at your side as you seek a more dignified life for yourselves and your families. To all of you: o’scià!

This morning, in the light of God’s word which has just been proclaimed, I wish to offer some thoughts meant to challenge people’s consciences and lead them to reflection and a concrete change of heart.

"Adam, where are you?" This is the first question which God asks man after his sin. "Adam, where are you?" Adam lost his bearings, his place in creation, because he thought he could be powerful, able to control everything, to be God. Harmony was lost; man erred and this error occurs over and over again also in relationships with others. "The other" is no longer a brother or sister to be loved, but simply someone who disturbs my life and my comfort. God asks a second question: "Cain, where is your brother?" The illusion of being powerful, of being as great as God, even of being God himself, leads to a whole series of errors, a chain of death, even to the spilling of a brother’s blood!

God’s two questions echo even today, as forcefully as ever! How many of us, myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live; we don’t care; we don’t protect what God created for everyone, and we end up unable even to care for one another! And when humanity as a whole loses its bearings, it results in tragedies like the one we have witnessed.

"Where is your brother?" His blood cries out to me, says the Lord. This is not a question directed to others; it is a question directed to me, to you, to each of us. These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God! Once again I thank you, the people of Lampedusa, for your solidarity. I recently listened to one of these brothers of ours. Before arriving here, he and the others were at the mercy of traffickers, people who exploit the poverty of others, people who live off the misery of others. How much these people have suffered! Some of them never made it here.

"Where is your brother?" Who is responsible for this blood? In Spanish literature we have a comedy of Lope de Vega which tells how the people of the town of Fuente Ovejuna kill their governor because he is a tyrant. They do it in such a way that no one knows who the actual killer is. So when the royal judge asks: "Who killed the governor?", they all reply: "Fuente Ovejuna, sir". Everybody and nobody! Today too, the question has to be asked: Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours? Nobody! That is our answer: It isn’t me; I don’t have anything to do with it; it must be someone else, but certainly not me. Yet God is asking each of us: "Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?" Today no one in our world feels responsible; we have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters. We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the levite whom Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the side of the road, and perhaps we say to ourselves: "poor soul…!", and then go on our way. It’s not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured, assuaged. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!

Here we can think of Manzoni’s character – "the Unnamed". The globalization of indifference makes us all "unnamed", responsible, yet nameless and faceless.

"Adam, where are you?" "Where is your brother?" These are the two questions which God asks at the dawn of human history, and which he also asks each man and woman in our own day, which he also asks us. But I would like us to ask a third question: "Has any one of us wept because of this situation and others like it?" Has any one of us grieved for the death of these brothers and sisters? Has any one of us wept for these persons who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who were looking for a means of supporting their families? We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion – "suffering with" others: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep! In the Gospel we have heard the crying, the wailing, the great lamentation: "Rachel weeps for her children… because they are no more". Herod sowed death to protect his own comfort, his own soap bubble. And so it continues… Let us ask the Lord to remove the part of Herod that lurks in our hearts; let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like this. "Has any one wept?" Today has anyone wept in our world?

Lord, in this liturgy, a penitential liturgy, we beg forgiveness for our indifference to so many of our brothers and sisters. Father, we ask your pardon for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts; we beg your forgiveness for those who by their decisions on the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies. Forgive us, Lord!

Today too, Lord, we hear you asking: "Adam, where are you?" "Where is the blood of your brother?"

At the end of Mass, the Pope said the following words :

Before imparting my blessing to you I want to thank you once again; you people of Lampedusa, for the example of love, charity and hospitality that you have set us and are still setting us. The Bishop said that Lampedusa is a beacon. May this example be a beacon that shines throughout the world, so that people will have the courage to welcome those in search of a better life. Thank you for bearing this witness! And I also want to thank you for your tenderness which I have felt in Fr Stefano himself. He told me on the boat what he and the parochial vicar do. I thank you all, and I thank you, Fr Stefano.

Where is your brother?  When will acknowledge that these men and women and children crossing the borders are our brothers and sisters—brothers and sisters!!!  Unless, of course, we are some sort of unbelievers who don’t take God at his word—these are our brothers and sisters we are turning our back on.  Governor Perry and Speaker Boehner and President Obama and the whole lot of them, Democrat or Republican, make me ashamed in how they exploit this situation for political purposes.  To quote the Pope:

These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God!

I am grateful that Cardinal O’Malley and Bishop Kicanas went to the border and celebrated the Eucharist there, handing the Body of Christ through “the wall,” that symbol of how selfishly sinful we are.  There is nothing more un-Catholic than that wall.  God did not put a wall of separation between peoples: in fact Christ died to bring down any wall of separation between God and us or between us and one another. But where are the majority of our bishops?  Where are our clergy?  Silent as they were for centuries in the face of slavery.  Silent as they are in the face of state-sponsored murder in the death penalty.  Silent as they are in the face of so many gross systemic injustices.  When the history of the Church comes to its final conclusion in the face of the King who comes on his royal throne to separate the nations as a Shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (cf Mt 25:32), the response of American Catholics to the plight of our immigrant brothers and sisters will be as shameful as any inquisition, as collaboration in the Holocaust, as the burning of “heretics,” as the sex abuse scandal.  We need to change that while there is still time.  

Bishops (and a Pope) Who Remember That They Are Called To Be Apostles

Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas

giving communion through the

fence at the border to would-be

immigrants on the other side.

Well the Katholic Krazies are all over the blogosphere again about how Pope Francis “set a bad example” by “profaning” the Holy Thursday Mass by including women in the mandatum—the ritual foot washing.  Part of the problem is understanding what the mandatum is about.  (By the way, the word Maundy—as in Maundy Thursday—is a corruption of the Latin word mandatum which means “commandment” or “mandate.”  You can see this Latin root in in the word commandment.)  Some understand this to be a ritual portrayal of Christ washing the feet of his Apostles.  Others see it as fulfilling the command Christ gave to his disciples that night before he died of washing the feet of others in humble service.  For those for whom it is a ritual portrayal, the idea of including women as “Apostles” is dangerous because it remotely opens the door to women’s ordination.  For those who see the ceremony as fulfilling the command of Christ that the Apostles (represented in the ordained clergy) should was the feet of others—it is no problem.  Actually the best practice I have seen is when the clergy wash the feet of several congregants who then turn and wash the feet of their fellow parishioners who then take up the towel and basin and wash the feet of still others until all have both washed feet and had their feet washed.  When Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper to wash the feet of others, he did not intend to create a liturgy to be done once a year, but rather a humble service that would be part of everyday life.
For centuries the mandatum was a ritual that was not limited to Holy Thursday but part of regular life.  In some medieval monasteries, the abbot (or when he was not there, his representative) would wash the feet of pilgrims and guests.  Abbesses would do the same in women’s monastic houses.  Bishops often performed this service for the sick or the lame.  Clergy might do it in their parishes.  This might be done not just on Holy Thursday but at various times of penance—ember days, the beginnings of Great Lent or St Martin’s Lent (the period from St Martin’s Day, November 11^th until Christmas).  Sometimes Kings or Nobles were commanded to wash the feet of the poor as part of a penance—and sometimes Kings (and Queens) or nobles did it voluntarily out of their own holiness.   In pilgrim centers or monastic guesthouses it might even be a regular feature of hospitality.  Nowadays it is a much sanitized sort of thing as congregants present a well-scrubbed foot, with nails freshly clipped, out of a sock without holes and from a well-polished shoe to the priest to have warm water scented with lemon poured over it and be rubbed try with a nice fluffy towel.  Jesus probably just rolls his eyes at how we have sucked the need for humility out of the whole process. 
By the way, as this was not part of the Holy Thursday Mass but a separate service usually carried out in the monastic refectory or the cathedral chapter house, there were not normally restrictions about the sex of the participants.  (In monastic houses, however, it would generally be seen as improper for a man to wash the feet of a woman or a woman that of man unless the recipient of the deed was quite elderly.)        

The real problem with those who want to keep the Foot-Washing to be a ritual reenactment of Christ washing the feet of his disciples is that they want to overly spiritualize things.  We keep it Jesus and his disciples: no problem for us, they’re all dead—well except for Jesus of course, but he doesn’t count, he’s God.  It doesn’t have to bring us face to face with Christ-in-our-world.  There is a firewall between our religion and the exigencies of everyday life.   Ultimately such spiritualization of our faith is a denial of the Incarnation.  Everything is in the realm of the (pseudo)spiritual so it doesn’t impact on me and the choices I make in this world.  When Pope Francis goes to a youth-detention center or to a center for the disabled to wash feet on Holy Thursday (or any other day) it brings Christ and his disciples into the nitty-gritty every day realities that I must confront.  I can’t keep Jesus locked away in a tabernacle but run the danger of seeing him in the least of his brothers and sisters and being reminded of my responsibilities to him in those same brothers and sisters.

Just over two weeks ago Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson led a delegation of American Bishops to celebrate Mass at the fence that marks the border with Mexico—you know, that fence we have put up to keep Latino immigrants out of the United States.  The Blogosphere exploded with the Katholic Krazies talking about how the Mass had been “profaned” by this “little bit of episcopal nonsense.”  George Weigel—whose own brand of Catholicism has been shredded by the papacy of Pope Francis—declared “It’s not clear to me how holding Mass in these circumstances can be anything other than politicized…. To turn the Mass into an act of essentially political theater is something I thought we had gotten over in the Church, no matter how noble the cause might be.”   Of course what Weigel and the Krazies both overlooked is that Pope Francis had done precisely this same thing when he journeyed to the Italian island of Lampedusa and celebrated Mass to call attention to the plight of the thousands of Africans entering Europe illegally.  Like that Mass wasn’t political?  But then for some there is a difference between “their problem” (Africans coming into Europe) and our problem (Latinos coming into the United States).  For O’Malley and Kicanas—and Pope Francis—it is one and the same: “I was a stranger and you gave me welcome....  Whatever you do for the least of my sisters and brothers, you do for me."  What George Weigel overlooks in his somewhat monophysite Catholicism is the Incarnation is the most political act of all. God has chosen to enter history and history is forever changed.  For those of us who believe that the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us (John 1:14), nothing can be more political than the Eucharist.  Every time we encounter Christ in his Body and Blood we must also encounter him in his Body, the Church.  And when we encounter him in  his Body the Church, we cannot escape coming face to face with the least of his sisters and brothers: the immigrant (legal or illegal), the AIDS patient (gay or straight), the abused (sexually, physically, emotionally, bullied), the aged, the poor, the mentally ill, the physically handicapped—whomever.  If you don’t believe in political Christianity you are caught in the heresy of denying the Incarnation.  So nothing proclaims our Orthodoxy more than Pope Francis washing the feet of the disabled or Cardinal O’Malley handing the Body of Christ through the fence to communicants on the other side.  A Blessed Good Friday.