I believe Msgr. Schneider is right. It is going to take a great deal of catechesis to put an end to CITH. The ignorance amongst the faithful is so prevalent, the loss of faith in the Real Presence of colossal proportions, that most Catholics have no clue as to why they should not take the consecrated Host in the hand. But where does one begin? Most likely, you won’t get it in the standard CCD classroom, and priests are certainly not going to preach it from the pulpit. So, when a new article comes up on this topic, I hope to be able to post it. Here is a more recent one found over at Eponymous Flower:
Make eye contact and put on a happy face! Gee, isn't this fun !!
“Hand Communion promotes the erroneous assertion that the Host is a precious little piece of bread, that one can simply snap up.” -kreuz.net
(kreuz.net) Hand Communion could not be banned like a revolution.
This is what Msgr. Schneider (50) of Astana in Kazakhstan for the website ‘gloria.tv’ on the end of October.
Msgr Schneider is a sharp critic of hand Communion.
He recommends that the faithful can be led to kneeling Communion on the tongue with much patience and catechesis.
The Calvinist Form Leads to Calvinist Content
Msgr Schneider argued psychologically against the Calvinist practice of hand communion stemming from the sixteenth century.
One takes ordinarily with one’s fingers what one wants in a commonplace way.
On the other hand, kneeling Communion on the tongue is a “complete gesture of sacrality, which expresses the sublime.”
No mature person goes to a knee, to receive a meal.
Hand Communion promotes an erroneous understanding that the Host “is more bread, that one can take.”
Above all children may no longer experience, because of the daily form of hand Communion, the sublimity and greatness of Holy Communion.
That Wasn’t Hand Communion
Hand Communion has let the belief in real presence and in the transubstantiation of the bread disappear.
The traditional form of the Mass impresses this belief much better than in the New Eucharistic Celebration.
Msgr Schneider stressed that the ancient form of the reception of Communion was on the tongue.
The faithful merely received the Host on their hands.
BUT: They bent themselves down from below, in order to take the Communion with their tongue.
The transition to direct distribution of Communion in the mouth in the 6th and 7th centuries is something that was a logical consequence of a deepening Eucharistic understanding, according to Bishop Schneider.
Original, kreuz.net…
