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Table of contents

This isn't mere exteriority or respect for formal rules, but in the liturgy the Mystery of Christ, who died and rose, is celebrated with joy. And so, it is important to celebrate Holy Mass worthily and correctly, with a liturgy faithful to the canons of the Church, above all for respect for Jesus. I appreciate, in that sense, the continuous appeals of the Holy Father Benedict XVI for respect for the decorum of the liturgy.

In the last years there has been noted a worrying escalation of liturgical abuses. How do you explain this negative trend? The idea of sin has been lost, and so also the Sacrifice of Holy Mass has been mistreated and undervalued in currents of thought, also within the Church, that justify and tolerate everything creating a debatable circular and assembly-like dimension for the Eucharistic ceremony.

Then, and I believe this is partly the fault of the Roman Curia after Vatican II, there was a relaxed attitude, above all in interpretation, regarding the Council.


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It is urgently necessary to remedy this situation; I believe that the vertical dimension of the Eucharist is absolutely necessary because the faithful can grasp the great gift of Christ. Surely, the faithful are at risk of being only scandalized and driven away with the so-called "show-Masses" in which there are committed, in the name of freedom and creativity, every sort of wickedness. Let us come to the manner of administering Communion Even in this matter that relaxed attitude of many priests has made ridiculous in the eyes of Catholics the value of the Eucharist.

Personally, I retain that it best way to administer Communion is on the tongue, so much that in my diocese I have forbidden the Host in the hand. In Masses with great attendance, in the past we even found Hosts thrown onto the pavement of the Church. The ineffable mystery of the bodily presence of Christ in the consecrated host calls for a deeply reverent attitude. To take the Body of Christ in our un-anointed hands just as if it were a mere piece of bread is something in itself deeply irreverent and detrimental for our faith.

Dealing with this unfathomable mystery as if we were merely dealing with nothing but another piece of bread, something we naturally do every day with mere bread makes the act of faith in the real bodily presence of Christ more difficult.

July-August 1999

Such behavior toward the consecrated host slowly corrodes our faith in the bodily presence and fosters the idea that it is only a symbol of Christ. To claim that taking the bread in our hands increases the sense of the reality of the bread is an absurd argument.

Ritual, Body, and Contestation in Catholic Faith

The reality of the bread is not what matters that is also visible for any atheist. But the fact that the host is in reality the Body of Christ the fact that transubstantiation has taken place this is the theme which must be stressed. Arguments for Communion in the hand based upon the fact that this practice can be found among the early Christians is not really valid.


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They overlook the dangers and the inadequacy of re-introducing the practice today. Pope Pius XII spoke in very clear and unmistakable terms against the idea that one could re-introduce today customs from the times of the catacombs. Certainly we should try to renew in the souls of Catholics today the spirit, fervor, and heroic devotion found in the faith of the early Christians and the many martyrs from among their ranks. But simply adopting their customs is something else again; customs can assume a completely new function today, and we cannot and should not simply try to re-introduce them.

In the days of the catacombs the danger of desacralization and irreverence which threatens today was not present. The contrast between the saeculum [secular] and the holy Church was constantly in the minds of Christians. Thus a custom which was not danger in those times can constitute a grave pastoral danger in our day. Consider how St. Francis regarded the extraordinary dignity of the priest which consists exactly in the fact that he is allowed to touch the Body of Christ with his anointed hands. Francis said: "If I were to meet at the same time a saint from heaven and a poor priest, I would first show my respect to the priest and quickly kiss his hand, and then I would say: 'O wait, St.

Lawrence, for the hands of this man touch the Word of Life and possess a good far surpasses everything that is human'. Tarcisius distribute Communion though he was no priest? Surely no one was scandalized because he touched the consecrated host with his hands. And in an emergency, a layman is today allowed to give Communion to others. But this exception for emergency cases is not something which implies a lack of respect for the holy Body of Christ.

It is a privilege justified by emergency which should be accepted with trembling heart and should remain a privilege, reserved only for an emergency. But there is a great difference between this case of touching the consecrated host with our un-anointed hands and that of taking Communion in the hand as a matter of course on all occasions. To be allowed to touch the consecrated host with un-anointed hands is in no way presented to the faithful as an awe-inspiring privilege. It becomes the normal form of receiving Communion.

And this fosters an irreverent attitude and thus corrodes faith in the real bodily presence of Christ.

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It is taken for granted that everyone receives the consecrated host in his hand. The layman to whom the great privilege is granted for special reasons has to touch the host, of course. But there is no reason for receiving Communion in the hand; only an immanent spirit of paltry familiarity with Our Lord. It is incomprehensible why some insist on a way of receiving Communion which opens the door to all sorts of accidental and even intentional abuses. First, there is a much greater possibility that some particles of the consecrated host may fall.

In former times the priest watched with great care whether or not some particles of the host fell, in which case he would immediately take greatest care that the sacred particles would be reverently picked up and consumed by himself. And now without any apparent reason, many want to expose the consecrated host to this danger in a much greater degree than before this at a time when the host is made more and more to resemble bread and to crumble more easily.

Second, and this is an incomparably worse problem, the danger exists that a communicant, instead of putting the consecrated host into his mouth, will place it in his pocket or otherwise conceal and not consume it. This unfortunately has happened in these days of revived Satanism. Consecrated hosts are known to have been sold for blasphemous uses. In London, the price is said to be 30 pounds for one, which reminds us of the 30 pieced of silver for which Judas sold the Body of Our Lord. Is it believable that instead of applying the most scrupulous care to protect the most sacred consecrated host, which is truly the Body of Christ, the God-man, from all such possible abuses, there are those who wish to expose it to this possibility?

Have we forgotten the existence of the devil "who wanders about seeking whom he may devour"? What entitles us to assume that abuses of the consecrated host will not take place? The greater our respect, and the greater our love, the greater our realization of the ineffable holiness of the Eucharist the greater will be our horror of its being abused; and our eagerness to protect it from all possible blasphemous abuses.

Keeping the Faith. Telling the Truth.

Why for God's sake should Communion in the hand be introduced into our churches when it is evidently detrimental from a pastoral viewpoint, when it certainly does not increase our reverence, and when it exposes the Eucharist to the most terrible diabolical abuses?

There are really no serious arguments for Communion in the hand.

The oft-quoted reference of St. Cyril of Jerusalem is quite suspect, because what follows his famous quote is odd, superstitious, and even irreverent to Catholic thought. This has led scholars to question the authenticity of the text, that perhaps the saint's successor was really responsible for this odd statement, the Patriarch John, who succeeded St.

But this John was of suspect orthodoxy, which we know from the correspondence of St. So if the quote is genuine, it most likely is attributed to the Nestorian Patriarch John, which would explain the oddity of the text. The fact that St. Cyril is quoted to the exclusion of Pope St. Leo the Great, Pope St. Sixtus I, the Council of Trent, and centuries of Church tradition, is a prime example of the historical revisionism and dumbing-down of the modernists.

Just a sampling of reliable historical evidence is enough to demonstrate the consistent position of the Church regarding Communion in the hand. Sixtus I It is prohibited for the faithful to even touch the sacred vessels, or receive in the hand. Origen A. You who are wont to assist at the divine Mysteries, know how, when you receive the body of the Lord, you take reverent care, lest any particle of it should fall to the ground and a portion of the consecrated gift consecrati muneris.

You consider it a crime, and rightly so, if any particle thereof fell down through negligence. Council of Trent "To omit nothing doctrinal on so important a subject, we now come to speak of the minister of the Sacrament, a point, however, on which scarcely anyone is ignorant. The pastor then will teach that to priests alone has been given power to consecrate and administer the Holy Eucharist. That the unvarying practice of the Church has also been, that the faithful receive the Sacrament from the hand of the priest, and that the priest communicate himself, has been explained by the Council of Trent; and the same holy Council has shown that this practice is always to be scrupulously adhered to, stamped, as it is, with the authoritative impress of Apostolic tradition, and sanctioned by the illustrious example of our Lord himself, who, with His own hands, consecrated and gave to His disciples, His most sacred body.

To consult as much as possible, for the dignity of this so August a Sacrament, not only is its administration confided exclusively to the priestly order; but the Church has also, by an express law, prohibited any but those who are consecrated to religion, unless in case of necessity, to touch the sacred vessels, the linen or other immediate necessaries for consecration. Priest and people may hence learn, what piety and holiness they should possess who consecrate, administer, or receive the Holy of Holies.

The Holy See firmly opposed this disobedient and abusive practice from the very beginning. On October 12, , the "Consilium" wrote to Bernard Cardinal Alfrink, Archbishop of Utrecht, Netherlands: "The Holy Father does not consider it opportune that the sacred Particle be distributed in the hand and later consumed in different manners by the faithful, and therefore, he vehemently exhorts [that] the Conference offer the opportune resolutions so that the traditional manner of communicating be restored throughout the world.

Pope Paul VI wavered between two options: 1 close the door to all concessions, or 2 allow the concession indult only where its use was firmly established. Pope Paul VI made a gamble by deferring to the prudence of the local bishops to assist him in reigning in the widening disobedience. Unfortunately, the bishops did not help Pope Paul VI, but opened the doors even wider for abuse.

Practicing Catholic

Communion in the hand was introduced without authorization, Paul VI tenaciously opposed allowing it but decided to grant an indult only where its use was firmly established and this with the purpose of "helping the Episcopal Conferences to comply with their pastoral work, frequently more difficult than ever because of the present situation.

Communion on the tongue is the law of the Church, even to this day; Communion in the hand is the exception to the law. But Pope Paul VI was opposed by his own bishops, and by the Episcopal Conferences, who failed to reign in the abuse of Communion in the hand. This is the real reason why Communion in the hand spread throughout the world. This being the reason that in liturgical matters even the Episcopal Conferences sometimes proceed on their own accord more than what is justified.

It also occurs that arbitrary experiments are made and this introduces rites that openly contradict the norms of the Church. Peter's Basilica specifying that all priests who celebrated Mass in St. Peters, no matter where they came from, were to give Communion only on the tongue. Likewise, a canon lawyer present at the papal Mass in Chicago witnessed the mayor of Chicago approach the Holy Father with outstretched hands.