Cardinal Sarah: return to Communion directly on the tongue while kneeling

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yankeesouth said:
Hopefully though if someone prefers kneeling to receive they are allowed that right?
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No place to do it. I suppose they could just do it on the altar steps, but there are so many who take communion, I’m afraid they’d get trampled.

Edit: They couldn’t do it there because Father and the EMHC stand on the altar steps. No one has shown an inclination to kneel, so far.
 
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yankeesouth said:
Hopefully though if someone prefers kneeling to receive they are allowed that right?
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I see people do it occasionally, even without the altar rail. Most go to the back of the line, so no one is behind them to potentially stumble over them.
 
I never did understand this stumbling thing. Do people try to move forward with someone still there? Do they not see the person kneeling? It is a sign of respect, not a cloak of invisibility. I have seen people kneel, bow a little, bow a lot, and have never seen anyone trampled or even stumble. I think one that would stumble over someone kneeling might stumble over the person in front of them anyway. The Pope has said this is the right of all (to kneel), so let us show a little patience. The Host will still be there for our turn.

I sure hope this is not being made to bully people who feel the need to kneel before the Lord to conform.
 
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FrDavid96 said:
As the Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, his “mandates” (when he makes them) are the rules of the Church.
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I couldn’t like this more than once so I am quoting it.
 
godisgood77 said:
As prefect, he may have the ability to mandate things related to the Liturgy. However, he serves at the pleasure of the Pope. And thankfully, the Pope has exercised his authority multiple times now to correct Cardinal Sarah. I think that if the Cardinal were to try and mandate his personal preference for how to receive communion, he would be corrected yet again.
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“…out of reverence toward this sacrament nothing touches it but what is consecrated, hence the corporal and the chalice are consecrated, and likewise the priest’s hands, for touching this sacrament. Hence it is not lawful for anyone else to touch it, except from necessity — for instance, if it were to fall upon the ground, or else in some other case of urgency.”

St. Thomas Aquinas
 
godisgood77 said:
The Pope did correct him after the Cardinal went public with a faulty interpretation of Magnum Principium. The Cardinal was wrong on that one… Liturgy: Pope’s Letter to Cardinal Sarah (Unabridged Translation) - ZENIT - English

I suspect if he continues to talk as if receiving the Eucharist standing on the tongue as objectively superior to receiving standing and in the hand, he will receive a similar correction…
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Cardinal Sarah may have wrongly assumed that Magnum Principium was to be interpreted in the light of Tradition and Canon Law, but he was not wrong or faulty in what he said.
 
KMG said:
Reception on the tongue is objectively superior.
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godisgood77 said:
Ha! If you say so, I guess… 😉

I’ll stick the the Church on this subject, not Mr. KMG. Both postures have been used throughout the history of the Church… you are certainly allowed to have a preference, but can’t impose your preference on others as objectively better… sorry!
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In the 16th Century, those who followed the Protestant heresy and left the Catholic Church abolished the practice of receiving Communion on the tongue in order to deny the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Instead, they promoted receiving in the hand in order to desacramentalize the Eucharist. It works.

Pope Benedict XVI on his return to distributing Communion on the tongue to those who are kneeling:

“I wanted it to be clear: Something quite special is going on here! He is here, the One before whom we fall on our knees! Pay attention!“
 
godisgood77 said:
What I find most interesting about this video is that the Auxiliary Bishop makes a point to say that Priests weren’t allowed to touch the Eucharist with the left hand… .only the right. If that isn’t an unhealthy obsession with rubric and form, I don’t know what is.
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That was because the left hand was used for the less sanitary functions of human life. Likewise, it was impolite and frankly barbaric to eat with your left hand.

That was before OSHA, and the promotion of washing hands with soap.

It was not an unhealthy obsession with rubric and form. It was a careful reverence for the Eucharist in a different cultural climate, used to illustrate how even consecrated hands are careful when contacting the True Presence.
 
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godisgood77 said:
I find it disappointing that we spend our time on such a low minded topic…
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The True Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist?! There is no higher topic! It is the source and summit of our faith!

“If it is God, why don’t you kneel? Why don’t you crawl?!” Cardinal Arinze
 
CilladeRoma said:
I don’t care how others receive and I would never question their belief in the Real Presence.
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It’s not about the person receiving, what they believe, who is right or who is wrong. It is about Truth and reverence. Is there one way that is better?

Those vessels on the altar were carefully cleaned before the bread and wine that would become our Lord were placed in them.

Do we ask people to wash their hands before receiving the Eucharist? We ask kids to wash their hands before dinner. After eating. After using the rest room. After playing outside. Do we ask or suggest that people wash their hands before receiving the Eucharist? We clean all of the consecrated vessels—not because we want them to be spiffy but because they are about to contact the most Precious gift we have received.

After a person receives in the hand, does that person then go back to the sacristy to the special sink with a drain directly into the ground so that the precious particles that may remain on the vessels do not join the sewer, and rinse the tiny particles off of the person’s hands into that drain to avoid any possibility of desecrating the Eucharist?

That’s what we do with all of the vessels that held Our Lord. Out of love for the True Presence, precautions are taken.
Did you ever see a mother, after receiving Communion, wipe a child’s nose with a ratty old used tissue she found in the bottom of her purse? Or a boy leave for a potty break? Someone cover their mouth to cough or sneeze?

Why bother with all of the rituals to prevent desecrating the Eucharist with all of the consecrated units that come into contact with our Lord—the ciborium, the chalice, the priest’s hands—only to place it into unpurified (unwashed) and unconsecrated hands?

Do we mean it when we reverently and carefully handle our Lord at the altar?
 
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CilladeRoma said:
The Church allows both now.
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Under several conditions, one of which is as follows:
  1. Whatever procedure is adopted, care must be taken not to allow particles of the Eucharistic Bread to fall or be scattered. Care must also be taken that the communicants have clean hands and that their comportment is becoming and in keeping with the practices of the different peoples.
 
OraLabora said:
I have said that in my case, my tongue is just as « impure » as my hands,
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So, you take out the trash with your tongue, do you? Mop the floor. Clean the toilet. Pet the dog. (Ha ha.)
 
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dochawk said:
Prior to kneeling to earthly kings, standing was the position of respect, and kneeling of penitence. It simply isn’t appropriate to adopt a position of penitence in liturgy on the day of Resurrection.
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Kneeling is the Christian act of worship. Not penitence. Jesus knelt to pray. He was not adopting a posture of penitence.

Pope Benedict XVI:

“It may well be that kneeling is alien to modern culture — insofar as it is a culture, for this culture has turned away from the faith and no longer knows the one before whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture. The man who learns to believe learns also to kneel, and a faith or a liturgy no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core. Where it has been lost, kneeling must be rediscovered, so that, in our prayer, we remain in fellowship with the apostles and martyrs, in fellowship with the whole cosmos, indeed in union with Jesus Christ Himself.”

The whole article is illuminating.

adoremus.org

The Theology of Kneeling

The theology of kneeling is explained by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the following excerpt from a chapter, “The Body and the Liturgy”, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, published by Ignatius Press in 2000, reprinted with permission...
adoremus.org adoremus.org
 
He needed help bending his knees to kneel. And he needed help returning to his feet. But he insisted. He is a Saint.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
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