Dear All,
Following this thread, I realized that most of the participants are going in circles, quoting pro and contra ideas.
First of all, my own bias. This topic is a heated one which my cousin and I argued until she was nearly in tears and fully frustrated. I was defending the right to have communion in the hand, and she said she had read sufficiently to disagree that it was right at all. I’m afraid that my heated stand changed.
Her argument was that it might have been okay in the first early centuries. But now, a new set of circumstances warranted that we should receive on the tongue. If Our Lord said, “Take and eat,” he need not have meant “take” as in “use your hand” but simply, “Receive this and eat” and it could be well on the tongue. In support of this idea, a few artists have shown Christ giving to the mouth of the Apostle. They might have been wrong, of course, and Christ might have put it into their hands, but then this does not mean Christ would approve of the same idea now.
I too read Maria Simma’s story as told by Nicky Eltz. This is a German lady who is being visited constantly by the souls in Purgatory. Nicky Eltz portrayed a woman who was hard, realistic, pious and not prone to nonsense. Something about the account struck a cord in me that it was true. The thing that is out of place with my ideas was that the souls were suffering in Purgatory for having received communion in the hand. And the bishops and priests who promoted it were in Purgatory for it.
Okay, the Church introduced this, or rather re-introduced it. And Archbishop Bugnani was the one who worked this out. Deo Gratias posted this website:
cin.org/mateo/communion-hand.html which was very interesting, and tells that Archbishop Bugnani was the one who introduced the Communion in the hand.
I looked at the website someone sent me and found his name on the list of freemasons in the Catholic Church:
catholicbook.com/fidelis_et_verus56.htm where he is number 25. In this article, he is credited with crafting the Novus Ordo Mass “with the help of 6 Protestant and one Jewish clergymen”.
Well, he has the power, conferred by the Pope. But is this article true? How did the people who posted this website get the facts? Is he really a freemason? Is he part of a conspiracy to throw the Church into utter confusion? Well, if you look at our posts, he has certainly succeeded. Mike Warnke, a former Satanist high priest who converted to Christianity, warned the US bishops that Communion in the hand was a mistake, as it would allow Satanists easier access to the Sacred Host for their Satanic services. I read somewhere they have black Masses involving a naked virgin and they push the Host into … use your imagination. And hosts from other churches do not count, only our Catholic Churches can produce the Hosts they want. (If this doesn’t prove the True Presence, I don’t know what other argument would.)
Two other apparitions approved by the Church, meaning that the local Bishops overseeing the locality where the apparitions took place have given the approval to the authenticity of the apparitions, happened in Akita, Japan, and in Nigeria, Africa. Sister Agnes Sasagawa and her small community of nuns were led to abandon Communion in the hand to receive Our Lord on the tongue. And Barnabas the Nigeria seer, a young boy who is now an engineering student, was told by Jesus in his conversations to abandon Communion in the hand. It took many years for his bishop to make the decision to approve, because he was puzzled why something that is approved by the Church, and is the norm by now, has been singled out by Jesus for condemnation.
Pope Pius VI said in Memoriale Domini that “this method,” on the tongue, “must be retained” and the Council of Rouen (650 A.D.) said “Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layperson, but only in their mouths.” Other Councils, Constantinople (695 A.D.) and Saragozza (380 A.D.) threatened excommunication with anyone who received communion in the hand. Trent says, “the unvarying practice of the Church has also been, that the faithful receive the Sacrament from the hand of the priest…”
Pope John Paul II himself is personally quite horrified by the ruling, authorized by someone with the given power to do so. Hence he has been speaking against communion in the hand in private and lesser known public speeches (Mar 1 1989 in SS Nome Di Maria Church and Nov 1980 in Germany), and as one of you pointed out, he refused communion in the hand to Mdm Giscard d’Estaing and put the host in her mouth.
Well, what do you think?
Yva
