A friend related to me, yesterday, that when her pastor isn't available to celebrate daily Mass, his secretary does a Communion service complete with reading the Gospel and a little homily-like talk. I checked with a priest friend about the 'rubrics' on this and he said that this sort of practice has been condemned by Rome through the years. This makes me wonder if the priest is so uninformed of proper procedure in the Catholic Church or does he feel entitled to run his parish as he deems fit.
Seems to me that if he knows better but choses to do it anyway, he could be guilty of the sin of disobedience to the Church and with leading his parishioners astray, especially the foolish secretary who probably feels quite the thing being in 'charge' at the altar.
If the priest is able to claim invincible ignorance of the correct protocol on Communion services, he is still amiss in his duties to his vocation because I'm willing to bet this was covered somewhere in his seminary studies.
The erring priest should also be aware that every person who goes forth from his church convinced that this practice is legit, expands the scope of the priest's primary 'sin' in going against the rule of the church. No wonder it seems that our Faith gets watered down when a pastor doesn't hold it in the esteem it deserves.
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