- Nov 26, 2019
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I don't have an issue with reserving consecrated elements but doing so does create an enticement for those who wish to desecrate and profain the Christian faith to do so.
My view is that we should avoid making the mistake the Assyrian Church made in response to Muslim desecrations by not putting icons on display in their church, because even though they are not doctrinally iconoclastic, some members of the church have become opposed to icons and the result is complicating their efforts to reintroduce icons in North America. Likewise I believe the Oriental Orthodox churches, where the idea of a presanctified liturgy came from (specifically from St. Severus of Antioch, the most important theologian falsely accused by the largest number of people of being guilty of a heresy he actually anathematized, that being Monophysitism - St. Severus of Antioch was one of the leading proponents of Theopaschitism and the principle of Communicatio Idiomatum which is so important to Lutheran theology, and which is also what makes Lutheran Orthodoxy so deliciouosly Patristic-flavored, probably stopped having a presanctified liturgy after the Islamic conquest of all of their lands except Ethiopia, which I think might still have one, due to desecrations, although the Malankara Independent Syrian Church has reconstructed the Syriac Orthodox presanctified liturgy known as the Signing of the Chalice, and it also survives in the Maronite and Syriac Catholic churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East has been trying to bring it back as well, celebrating it at the monastery they tried but failed to establish in the central valley of California about a decade ago.
Using a pyx or other appropriate container, the priest could remove the presanctified elements. I have also seen a recently constructed Catholic church which has a chapel for Eucharistic Adoration with a stunning gilded tabernacle which is doubtless worth a small fortune, and it just occurred to me this is in a separate chapel with lockable doors, probably because the glass is reinforced and in this manner it would be harder to break in and steal.
I also believe newly built churches should require all people to pass through a Narthex or after the liturgy, exit via a secondary mezzanine, and ideally put a tertiary lobby on the Narthex, so that sacred icons, holy water and candles kept in the Narthex for certain services conducted there are protected by two layers of locked doors, and the Nave with its icons and the Apse where the altar and tabernacle are is protected by another, and the sacristy should only be accessible from the nave or Apse.
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