Hi Annette,
This is totally inappropriate
and prohibited by Church Law.
The priest is the primary administer
of the Eucharist
who represents Christ himself.
His
actions, or lack there of, are a
scandalous abuse. What you call Eucharistic Ministers,
the Church calls Extraordinary Ministers
of the Eucharist.
Because they are used in extraordinary
circumstances, not ordinary ones. The
priest himself is a Eucharistic Minister;
he is the primary Eucharistic
Minister at Mass.
The only time when Extraordinary
Ministers may be considered by
the priest is if the number of parishioners at Holy
Mass are too many that distributing
Holy Communion within a reasonable
period of time would take way
too long. Many times, this directive
is abused.
I, myself, have run into an identical
situation at a neighboring parish
during daily Mass. I vaguely remember hearing the priest say that
he had some disability with his legs
or with standing for prolonged periods
of time. For this reason, he also
sat while Lay Extraordinary Ministers
distributed Holy Communion.
In my personal opinion, if he was
really interested in being a model
witness for the Catholic priesthood,
after consecrating the Blessed Sacrament
at Mass, he would instruct a lay
person to bring a chair to the front
of the church, where
he would usually distribute Holy
Communion, and distribute the Blessed Sacrament
there, while sitting down.
Simple!
After talking in charity with the celebrant about this, if appropriate, I would make the local bishop aware of this.
I hope this helps,
Mike
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