My recently-solemnly-professed friend, Br Luke, O.C.S.O., has for one of his tasks at Tarrawarra Abbey the sale and distribution of Eucharistic breads; however, they are not made there, but rather imported from a factory in the United States; hence, the wheat transsubstantiated on Australian altars is not harvested beneath the Southern Cross, but grown in North America; our farmers profit not, but subsidized Yankees do.
Even worse, the website of the company that prepares these hosts informs us that: "Cavanagh breads are produced in the United States in an exceptionally clean and modern automated facility. The breads are sealed minutes after baking and are untouched by human hands." [My bold italics.]
It would seem therefore that, when celebrating Mass in the Ordinary Form, in offering up the gifts to be consecrated, the priest is uttering a falsity: for, instead of "the bread we offer" being the "work of human hands" as the prayer states, it is made by robots!
It is dreadful to think that such a situation has come to pass: we are a wheat-exporting nation, and yet import the wafer-breads used at Mass; worst of all, it appears that they are prepared in a manner that is, if not uncanonical, at least grossly contradictory to the prayer of oblation approved by Paul VI.
I do hope the Bishops of Australia urgently debate this issue and mandate that our own hosts be made here, and by human hands, not overseas by machines. Lex orandi, lex ferendi!
