By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When people sin, they break the bonds of friendship with God and with their brothers and sisters, which is why penance and reconciliation are needed for an honest participation in the Eucharist, said U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford.

The cardinal, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican court dealing with the sacrament of penance and matters of conscience, was one of several U.S. and Canadian prelates addressing the world Synod of Bishops Oct. 3-4.

The Oct. 2-23 synod was convoked to discuss the Eucharist. The Vatican released summaries of all the bishops' talks and provided briefings with fuller quotations from the speeches.

While the church recognizes itself as the community of those redeemed, saved and reconciled with God through Jesus, Cardinal Stafford said, the church also recognizes that each of its members is tempted by sin and in need of reconciliation.

"To renew the alliance of friendship with God is not just an intimate decision made by the Christian penitent, but it requires a sign recognized in and by the church community in the person of the minister, because the sin has broken the bonds of friendship with the Lord and with the church," he said.

Bishop Gerald Wiesner of Prince George, British Columbia, urged the synod members to examine ways to ensure that Catholics fully and actively participate in the Mass with an understanding of what they are celebrating. The bishop said ongoing education for children and adults is needed, but so is attention to the rites and prayers used at Mass.

Participation is a right and duty, he said, and that is unlikely to occur if the language of the translations of prayer texts is an antiquated or artificial form of the local language.

Father Mark Francis, superior general of the Viatorians, criticized the synod's working document for appearing to give the same importance to eucharistic adoration and the celebration of the liturgy in opposition to the teachings of the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council.

A key for improving devotion to the Eucharist, he said, is to improve the way it is celebrated.

"Rather than simply blame our Catholic people's lack of faith and the secularization of society for the small percentage who attend Mass in many countries, we also need to acknowledge with sadness that bad preaching and poorly prepared and poorly executed eucharistic celebrations sometimes drive good people away from the church," he said.

Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia spoke about the theological significance of the Eucharist in relation to the Trinity. It is within the Trinity, particularly in the relationship between the Father and Son, he said, that "we find the deepest explanation of the Eucharist, especially as a sacrifice -- a sacrifice renewed in the Eucharist."

"Christ's love for us and the love of the Father who sent his Son into the world to redeem us explain to a great extent the Eucharist," the cardinal said.

But while people recognize the Eucharist as Christ's sacrifice of love for them, they tend to overlook Christ's sacrifice as his supreme act of love for the Father and the resurrection as the Father's response of love, Cardinal Rigali said.

Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh was one of the first bishops to address the synod.

The bishop, an expert on religious education, urged the synod members to take a holistic approach to catechesis on the Eucharist and social and moral issues.

The highly secularized cultures of many countries make it difficult to help people grasp the ideas of transcendence and the meaning of the sacraments, revelation, grace and spiritual transformation, Bishop Wuerl said.

Catechesis, particularly on moral and social justice issues, he said, must not be disconnected from the heart of the Catholic faith: the death and resurrection of Christ and participation in it through the Eucharist.

Bishop Wuerl said not all the news about modern believers is bad news.

Many young people, he said, have a sense that "the secular, material world does not provide them sufficient answers for their lives. There is a hunger for God and the things of the Spirit, but it needs to be encouraged, informed and directed."

Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops