A priest might prefer Eucharistic Prayer #1, or using Penitential Rite Form A. They may use that as they see fit. The Church has given the priest that right, and a layperson cannot refuse that right. And it is a legitimate right of the priest.
Likewise, the Church has given each person the right to receive Holy Communion on the tongue or kneeling., or where permitted, standing or in the hand. It is no less of a right than what the Church gave to the priest to choose which EP they use, or which form of the Penitential Rite., and neither the priest nor another layperson can
refuse them either.
And indeed this is a very welcomed contrast.
As you write, the Presider ultimately is the one to make discretionary decisions such as you list – and many more besides.
He is, however, repeatedly admonished throughout to balance this right, that is properly his, against the needs of the people who are participating in the Mass…and that is the point that precisely needs to be made clear here, when the language employed is much too absolute.
While the decisions are his, he is always to take into account many other factors and even is directed to place those factors ahead of his own preference in his decision-making.
A fundamental principle of pastoral theology concerns the weighing of various goods in order to arrive at a determination that is the best outcome in circumstance available, which was always given the emphasis in my lectures to provide needed balance.
You, as Presider, will have the right to decide X – but is X really the best decision for the people to whom you are ministering? Or, in fact, should you actually choose to do C, at the other end of the scale?
You are correct to cite the admonition of the Holy See concerning a sweeping decision certain bishops made for an entire geographic region at the time of the Swine Flu, rather than acting on a case by case basis.
Of course, in balance to that, there was also the unfortunate case involving the United States when they sought to impose, by draconian effort, a rubric on the posture after Communion. The Holy See had to intervene to say that the rubric was being over-applied…as it was stating a preference for the posture in that moment, all else being equal…not a command to be enforced under threat of punishment.
There are times when I have had to overrule an individual communicant in hospital…either because they wanted to receive in the hand when they could only receive a tiny fragment that I had to place in the mouth because to act otherwise was to risk the particle being lost or a patient who wanted to receive on the tongue but the infection control procedure obviated it.
Again, speaking as a parish priest now retired, if someone came to me making a statement “My children have always and everywhere received on the tongue. What is my recourse as I’m quite livid they would EVER be denied the Holy Eucharist?”"
My very first question would be: “Why do you formulate what you said in the way you did? Do you think receiving in the hand is in any way not perfectly acceptable and completely virtuous?”
As I said, over the years, I have seen very sad situations in which a person ends up having a hostile relationship with their parish priest, their chancery officials and the bishop himself over how the person chose to react to situations and how the person chose to engage the officials. When one moves from a situation of dialogue to one of livid confrontations…well, one ought not be surprised when one finds one is then only having confrontations with doors that have been closed, locked, and barred.
