"Spontaneous"

A story that apparently touched hearts.

Bernd Hagenkord, Fr. Lombardi’s German language assistant, underlined that many of the Fathers “spoke in defence of and for a clarification of the Catholic doctrine on marriage and the family, saying that the Christian vision of marriage needs to be more clear-cut, with an emphasis on the fact that the Church does not have the authority or the power to alter the word of God. Others have underlined that as a follower of Jesus’ teaching, it cannot permanently exclude certain faithful from the sacraments because we are not border control officers who check Christians’ purity.” Hagenkord summed up by stating that “many, many speeches” were given and they were all  “constructive and of a high quality”. 
Fr. Manuel Dorantes, the Spanish-speaking language assistant, recounted the powerful story told by one Synod Father about a very unusual first communion. When a young boy went up to the altar to receive the host, he spontaneously broke it in half and gave half to his father, who was a remarried divorcee and could therefore not receive it directly. 

Forgive me if I doubt the "spontaneity" of such a gesture.
I find it almost impossible to believe that such a thing could take place unless a parent or other adult engineered it, by complaining about the injustice of his not receiving the Blessed Sacrament, by discussing the pettiness of regulating the Sacrament, by playing on the child's emotions regarding his poor father.

In the world in which we live where broken families are tragically ubiquitous I suspect there are few of us who are not on intimate terms with such a family.
And horribly, almost as widespread as the divorces themselves, are the situation wherein one or both parents, subtly or blatantly, seeks to poison the mind of the child against the other parent.

Parents have such power over their children!

If you choose, you can protect your little ones from hating another parent.

If you choose, you can help your little ones to understand what the Church teaches and why She teaches it and why you do not receive.

Or you can be selfish and play the victim and protect your image in front of them and work on their sympathy.

By the way, I have seen a parent and child strolling away from the "communion station" sharing a host.

But it was the parent who stretched out a hand to receive the Body of the Lord from the minister, casually brekaing off a piece and not even looking as he handed some off to the child.

Do most of us believe there is such a thing as a "state of grace," I wonder?